


Cat Piss

by bible



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Death, Dark Humor, Excessive Amount of Classic Rock, Filthy, Gunplay, M/M, Pedophilia, Road Trips, Sexy Shotguns, Underage Sex, Unreliable Narrator, hawaiian shirts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:23:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 25
Words: 73,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bible/pseuds/bible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I wish I'd be kidnapped." </p><p>Esme said this very often and thought it even more. And then it happens.</p><p>A mentally ill tattoo artist with Hawaiian shirts and a taste for two-percent milk finds his cat in his toilet bowl one day after work, drowned. This triggers a series of violent events as he attempts to track down the suspected murderer of his most beloved creature. His roommate, a young English man with a predilection of Internet gore and taxidermy has disappeared the same day his cat is found dead.</p><p>With nothing to lose, our humble narrator straps the corpse of his urine-covered cat (he doesn't flush) in the backseat of his 1999 Nissan, kidnaps the twelve-year-old object of his desires, Esme Blanchet, from the apartment complex they both share, and brings him on his cross-country journey to find his cat's killer and dish out the same punishment his roommate allegedly delivered the cat.</p><p>(Completed as of 12/1/2016!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Some beautiful artwork by [kusoerogaki:](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kusoerogaki/profile) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cv5aimkUMAA9dMT.png
> 
> Thank you so much, but still, I can't thank you enough!

He's a pinball wizard  
There has to be a twist  
A pinball wizard's  
Got such a supple wrist

—"Pinball Wizard"   
The Who

* * *

            There are only two things I want out of life:

            First, I want to have sex with my neighbor.

            Second, I want to kill my roommate.

            There’s foam on my upper lip. Just moments ago, I had a mustache. It was an unshaven brown bristle like the wispy eyelashes of a horse. It sat above my mouth and hid a red bulb of acne. My electric razor opened that pimple and it spilled pus.

Leonard’s playing the pinball machine.

Sitting there, under a rattling air conditioner in the arcade that emits breaths aromatic of mothballs, I think about my situation.

            Sid Vicious is still buckled in the backseat of my car. Tiny mouth parted mid-yowl, his soft fur was rustling in the air conditioner, and he stank like my own acidic urine. It was hard to drive, my teary eyes blurring the headlights behind me, smearing it into stains of TV static in my head that throbbed—and still throbs—with the ache of crying.

            I watch Leonard now. I am dry-eyed and pink with the after-effects of mourning. In the intermittent and blinking red and white lights of the pinball machine, Leonard’s glasses are a flat slate that reveal no eyes, shifting colors like a television screen. The ball rattles through its labyrinth, and his thumb works the machine with tenderness and ecstasy, the way a man might treat his woman.

            “What?” he asks me when I approach, with my root beer float.

            “You talk.” I sniff wetly, and drag my nose over the back of my wrist. My mucus smears into my arm hair.

            “Dude.”

            “Dude,” I say, and sniff again.

            He looks me over and says with casualness that puts to shame the stiffness of my back, the whiteness of my knuckles, “You can’t be so obvious. Looming over me like some downtrodden Big Bird.”

            “Sorry.”

            A _chunking_ noise of the machine stopping echoes between us. He drops his thick hands from it. The pinball drops into some forbidden chamber whose keys are quarters and bounces three times like an ellipsis. Ushering me to the front doors printed with glittering planet decals with his hand around my shoulder, Leonard walks me into the summertime dusk that is hot and buzzing with bugs. “What do you need?”

            So I show him. I show him the cat and he leans in the doorway of the car, exhaling with a hand on his hip. He shakes his head. Sid Vicious is getting stiffer, and his mouth is still open, two little bony teeth protruding, two little canines that’ll never gnaw on my ankles again. Leonard shuts the door in reverence, as if he’s just finished confirming the identity of a lost loved one in a morgue.

            “I’m sorry about that, man.”

            “So am I,” I sniff again, wet.

            He takes his glasses off and hooks them in the neck of his shirt. Without his glasses, he looks like a child, tender and awe-eyed, and I look away with my tongue jutting into my jowl, clamped between my teeth.

            With understanding, Leonard leads me to _his_ car. It’s toaster-shaped and bright green, Mardi Gras beads hung over the mirror. It is festive and joyful and betrays an image of ignorance, and when he pops the trunk, the flower-printed carpeting is lifted. And the gunmetal glints under the overhead streetlamp that flickers on like a spotlight, or God’s eye. Playing his phone’s flashlight over the weaponry, I think of an alligator’s mouth, full of teeth and shiny and wet.

            It all looks so dangerous.

            He sells me the sawn-off, double-barrel, 12-gauge shotgun for $2,200. We sit in his front seats as I thumb out the cash. There is something smug growing in me like a rose. It’s all just cotton.

            “Is it loaded?”

            Leonard gives me a wry smile and puts his glasses back on after he pockets my money. He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t attempt to sell me any bullets. He’s reverted back to the nerd hunched over the pinball machine.

            “You really think it’s worth it?”

            “What is?”

            “Life in prison because you want to avenge your cat?” We clamber out of the car.

            "I won't be getting life in prison."

            But Leonard's turned around, and he's walking back to the arcade, his pale face grape soda purple in the neon sign's light. Under the words **BULL'S-EYE ARCADE** that short little bastard slouches towards the threshold. I have the gun in my hands, and I watch him, standing silent in the parking lot. I call out, once.

            "Leonard!"

            He turns around, faceless, his thick glasses winking animatedly.

            My nights spent watching him play pinball out of the corner of my eye for the past two months dissipates. He is material. He has pocketed my money, and he is going to play more. Our silent camaraderie where I gorge myself on arcade food and he flicks and rolls quarters into a slot goes away. My time spent gathering information of his criminal tendencies on my incognito tab are swallowed in the large hole of the past.

            So I wave goodbye. “Goodbye, Leonard!” I yell, and with cheerful mirth warming my voice like sweets and honey, I add, “I love you!”

            And then his form lumbers back into the arcade. When the door opens tinny 8-bit music momentarily sings out until the door shuts closed again. It’s an innocent soundtrack.

            I linger only a few seconds, watching moths scramble wildly in the artificial light of the sign. Then I get back in my beige Nissan, and set the shotgun carefully in the backseat. I have no idea how to attend to the safety features of a firearm. But I'll learn.

            But now I have to go.

            All of this could have been prevented if my roommate hadn’t drowned my cat in my own piss.

            I set a hand on Sid’s belly, rubbing the tender black fur that shines. Oil slick shimmery, Indian hair blue. It’s feather gentle and I close my eyes, reverentially dragging my thumb over him. When I unintentionally hit a patch of bare skin I emit a wounded noise.

            “All of this was quite boring.”

            But that is how cats like things to be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, mom.
> 
> I don't necessarily consider this a comedy, but it's absurdest. Take this all very lightly. Even though heavy material lies ahead, it's not a commentary on the nature of the subject. The narrator's thoughts are not my own. I'm trying to break into my own original writing. Keep in mind, I'm a victim of CSA.
> 
> This is cathartic for me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this. Please leave now if you've read my tags and description and find you may be uncomfortable. (But then, everyone should be a little uncomfortable now and again. It means I've elicited some type of reaction besides complacency.)


	2. French Boy Cunt

I am just a new boy  
A stranger in this town  
Where are all the good times?  
Who's gonna show this stranger around?

—"Young Lust"  
Pink Floyd

* * *

 

            To go back to Thomas, we first need to start with Esme.

            I have anger issues.

            We all have _issues_ , I get it. But not like this. It was late June and the orange evening sky winked at me after work on the ride home. Interstate-30 was a hazy glare of glinting brake lights and headache-inducing shimmers of the heatwaves palpable over the street. I inched along in traffic, and two assholes on the radio named Jackie & Jackson discussed some pop star or the other.

            I was feeding my anger listening to the grating voices—tones of years of smoking—rusty laughs—media-induced commentary. (As if I’m so much better. I realize that now.) Half-way through my journey, the little whirling fan of my car went out, two months after the air conditioning did.

            When I got to the Sorel, my apartment complex, I was drenched in sweat and my hair was sticking to my neck and shoulders. The front of a black tee-shirt had outlined my ribs, clearly visible. And my head was throbbing with the onset of a migraine, tiny white bees dancing in my vision, an aura.

            It was the most exciting day of my life. I couldn’t find my keys, and no one was answering the door.

            When I’d gotten to my floor, I kicked the door once, and then twice, and then rapped on it violently. I waited three minutes, my fist _thump-thump-thumping_ on the white door, mocking gold numbers of my room ostentatiously grinning in my face. And when the stream came, it never halted.

            “Thomas! Thomas, you bastard. You know I don’t have the keys! Open it! I know you’re home, you lazy fuck! Come on! You’re— _napping_! Fuck! FUCK! You asshole! Open it up, open the fucking DOOR! You're such a lazy, lazy asshole. All you've gotta do is stand up! You're making my life shit! Shit! You're making it SHIT!” My fist stung from knocking it so violently, and the toe of my boot was scuffed beyond repair. (Inside that godforsaken apartment, there are three mouths of ruined plaster, consequence of my foot.)

            It went on like this for a few more minutes before I gave up and walked to the community pool.

            On a lawn chair with an overcoat of sweat clinging to me, I sat back with an arm slung over my eyes—makeshift sunglasses—and watched the aura dance more, a starshow of mind colors, my head providing curling visions to distract. Distract from the pain, distract from the noise and the sounds, the summer brightness.

            And it was orange outside.

            And his lips were the color of the inside of a grapefruit.

            He didn’t laugh loud, but his friend did. I pulled my arm away and I heard them in the pool. They were not in my line of sight, so I put my arm back down, sweaty and sticky and itchy. Like wearing glasses too long.

            I’ve known I was a pedophile when I was still the age to be a target myself. At sixteen, I didn’t understand the preoccupation with breasts and I didn’t particularly maintain the fascination that most of the gay community has with the well-built, the angular-jawed, the grown men. Under my sheets I’d rut my hips against a pillow in dreams it was the soft flesh of a pale boy. In high school, no one really asked me about my sexuality, and no one was keen to guess. I suppose I maintained a sort of asexuality in my teenage years to my peers.

            I harbored an inhibition to keep my hands to myself all my life. I never focused on one object of desire. There wasn’t a crush for me. An intangibility, yes. An idea. _The Perfect Boy_.

            _Splash_. “And I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck!’”

            “Wait, did you really?”

            Silence.

            “No.”

            Laughter: cheery, a child’s song.

            Until that point, my dreams had been nameless boy-children with no defining features, but a label, which was usually an age. A fourteen-year-old brunet. A twelve-year-old swimmer. Long legs and slim hips and a round, cherub face. I like them eleven to fourteen. I like their hair and their departure from boyhood, their confusion and low self-esteem, their wicked need to please and fit and conform. Their vulnerability and perversion, and still the shyness yet to be perfected and practiced into an artificial personality.

            “I hate her, though, and I _should’ve_.” French accent. Christ.

            I listened to them and then I stared unabashedly when the noises to my left materialized. They’d gotten out of the pool and were walking to their seats.

            The American boy was black-haired and thin-lipped, pale and tall, eyes squinted. He walked with a sort of insecure gait, and I was reminded horrifyingly of myself at that age. I’d never been a pretty child. I am an extremely average adult. (Well, not anymore, I suppose.)

            The American boy had a bottle of Gatorade and he unscrewed the cap of it with a lot of effort. It made the French boy laugh.

            I cannot offer you the most correct description of the French boy because to do so would imply his beauty is capable of being defined. His mouth was the first thing. Plush and red. They’ll make lipsticks in shade _Esme Blanchet:_   _Number twelve._

            He was edible. I wanted to devour him. I had never experienced something so lustful stirring in me. Once, and only once, at a hair salon, I’d fallen in love with a pubescent child with wild white-blond hair, skinny and wearing an off-brand pair of dirty jeans, looking horribly concerned about having his wonderful mop cut off. I’d almost cried with him when I saw it darkened and slicked back on his head post-shampoo.

            He still paled in comparison to Esme Blanchet, the little French boy. Thin and yet healthy, blue-eyed and blond, Hitler’s dream. Sprawling limbs milk-white in the winter and kissed gold in the summer, nose pert and reddish from his colds and sunburns, giving him the rosy guise of some charming snow-dweller despite having relocated to Dallas, Texas. Black eyelashes that rim those ice-pick eyes.

            And it’s not just his age, for he possesses an ageless allure.

            He flicked his fingers out at the slouching American boy and sprayed his face with chlorinated water. In my hazy stare at the blond child I hadn’t seen the American boy pull out his cellphone.

            “Esme! Don't get my phone wet."

            “Pay attention to _me_.”

            “I’m texting Natalie.”

            Drained, Esme flopped down, his erect, proud frame slouching on his chair, energy flushed from him, his pleasant face sapped of its glow. His chin found a home in his palm. Rosy-red bottom lip puffed in a pout, Esme frowned at the American boy's profile. The French are always so melodramatic. I’m glad the American boy whose name I do not know was preoccupied with Natalie, because _then_ Esme looked up at me, and he smiled when he saw me staring, and I felt my chest restrict. I grinned back. Waved a little too eagerly. I remember that, yes. I remember that! Feeling ashamed when I came home that I hadn’t maintained any casualness. _This must be what teenage boys feel like when they trip over to their homecoming date_ , I thought.

            Esme looked away quickly, still smiling, that dreamy little aura returning, as he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his shoulders. When he walked by me with the American boy leading, we made eye-contact again and I blinked once, twice, and he did too. I turned in my seat to watch him go, and he looked over his shoulder as he walked. I watched him walk until he was out of sight in the rows of the apartment complex.

            I got inside at ten that night and I didn’t yell once at Thomas, who’d opened the door for me, staring at me with his plucked-thin eyebrows hitched, his eyes puffy and red behind his specs, glittering like a birdbath. I didn’t even look at him. I walked in, smelling bad, my long hair plastered to my temples with matted sweat, aromatic of cigarettes and onion-like body odor.

            I walked in, and I took off my long-scarred boots and lay on the bed, pushing Sid Vicious off with my foot. He huffed cattily. 

            I walked in, and I took my sweaty red dick in hand and I jacked off for the very first time to the thought of what Esme Blanchet’s asshole might look like.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHOUT-OUT TO THE ONE BOOKMARK I HAVE! LOVE YOU, MAN!


	3. Impress the Child

What's your name?  
Who's your daddy?  
Is he rich like me?  
Has he taken   
Any time  
To show you what you need to live?

—"Time of the Season"  
The Zombies

* * *

 

            That’s probably about the time I began to lose my mind.

            My knees were two freckled islands in the bath water. It was 3:20 PM on a Saturday and I hadn’t done a thing except jack off three times and listen to Thomas wail on the other side of the wall, a noise akin to a blaring ship horn—long and disturbing.

            Three days after Esme Blanchet had stared at me across the pool, and I wondered what I’d done as a child all summer long. Because I was as friendless then as I was now, submerged in cold bathwater, thinking about little boy ass.

            Thomas opened the bathroom door. His hair was flat, gelled down. He looked like Hitler.

            If he’d made the effort to apply hair gel, he was probably crying on Skype for show. I pushed my hair back, sweat-slicked to my face from the oppressive June heat and asked, “What?”

            “There’s a kid who wants to see you,” he said, voice raspy and worn.

            Dressed in boxers and a Led Zeppelin shirt, I wrapped a towel around my hair, feminine, and I said hello to Esme who was opposite the door.

            “I’m bored,” he said. Then he tilted his head forward and rose his eyebrows. He was tall, but he still had to look up at me a little. It was inciting and submissive, that look, his fan of eyelashes giving him a half-mast glare of seduction. I thought, _this kid pisses rosewater_.

            I ended up taking him to the downstairs amenities room, a lobby sort-of-thing, to sit in the midst of a network of sofas. He grabbed a Styrofoam cup and pushed a few buttons on the machine that dispensed coffee. There were four streams that came out—chocolate, milk, chocolate, milk—and he pulled the cup away at the milk each time.

            “Lactose intolerant?” I asked when he sat back down. He drank, then shook his head.

            Sugar-lipped, he said, “No.”

            “Just want diabetes?”

            Even his laugh was accented. I wondered if his moans were, too. Unnecessary pride swelled in me at making this kid laugh. I scratched at a brown dirt stain on the knee of my jeans as he drank more. The white slope of his neck bobbed.

            “Where’s that from?” he nodded at my jeans. There was some tic in his voice, I noted. He cleared his throat a lot between words.

            I’d crawled after Sid Vicious through a maze of rosebushes in the apartment complex’s faux-inviting garden. Thomas had left the door open and Sid sprinted quickly away. Thorn marks had healed but I’d yet to wash my jeans.

            Instead of this petty truth, some teen boy in me sought to impress this child who kept clearing his throat, and I said, “I got in a fight—outside—with a construction worker.”

            “Why?”

            “He made fun of my hair.”

            “Why?”

            “I guess it’s too long to be acceptable in conventionally masculine eyes.”

            “Why?”

            “Guys usually have short hair.”

            “Why?”

            “Good question.”

            What had actually happened: I was in McDonalds, and I was in line, and a construction worker behind me and mumbled some off-handed comment under his breath on my hair to his buddy. In this era, confrontation is born and bred on the Internet. Anonymous comments. Reviews and angry but indirect statuses directed at the fuck who side-eyed you, the waiter who didn’t smile enough.

            I’m no better. I just smiled and took it and crafted violent fantasies in my mind on how to retaliate had he spoken up, had he intended on a fight. And now I shared it to some kid who might still believe that a normal person really still _did_ something in life.

            People don’t do much anymore.

            Esme leaned forward and scratched at the dirt with his nail, scraping it off.

            “Who won?”

            He looked up at me, eyebrow cocked.

            “Me.”

            “How’d you win?”

            I chewed the dead skin off my bottom lip and ate it. “I knocked him out.”

            Esme grinned a little, and rose his eyebrows. It was cute. His nose looked like a cherry. “Ooh,” he said, “You’re so strong.”

            I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or not, but I melted regardless and tugged at my shirt. My voice came in a soft exhale, like air leaking from a tire. “ _Yeaaah_.”

            Esme invited himself in to my apartment and sat on my couch. He fanned himself with his hand and looked out the window. His little freckled nose wrinkled at the sight of an overweight man that was very kind to me walking through the hall.

            “He’s fat,” he observed.

            “Yeah.”

            “It’s hot in here,” he said, and looked at me pointedly. “Why?”

            “It’s June,” I shrugged, omitting the fact that I didn’t pay the electric bill. He nodded and licked his bottom lip. “Tell me about yourself, Esme.”

            “I wish I’d be kidnapped.”

            He said this with such a casualness that he must have repeated this enough times. He almost seemed bored—as if this was his catchphrase, and the intensity of the statement was lessened by the fact that his intonation imbued a longing that had become permanent.

            I rose my eyebrows, and he continued staring out the window. He opened his mouth and then closed it, so I incited him.

            “Why?”

            He looked at me, and when he spoke, his accent dissipated. “I hate school.” And then it came back. “I have anxiety.”

_Doesn’t every twelve-year-old?_

            “I don’t mean the anxiety where I’m nervous that something will— _ahem_ —happen to me. I don’t fear getting in trouble, or fear something happening that’s, you know, gonna drag me out of my life. I have the kinda anxiety where I’m scared I’ll never be out of my— _ahem_ —own, uh… Own skin. I’m scared that nothing is ever going to happen to me. I don’t like routine. I don’t want to keep going to class with the same people, and I don’t want to keep coming home to my parents.”

            “Why?” I said, elbows on my knees. I was intrigued. “What’s wrong with your parents?”

            He stared at me quietly for a while, and then his mouth peeled back to reveal a snarl, his imperfect teeth set in his skull at strange angles. It was beautiful. Like seeing a small cat growl, in an attempt to be a tiger.

            “They’re bad people. They hurt me.”

            And in my headspace of white knight heroics, I pictured a hundred black bruises that I hadn’t seen at the pool dotting his skin, a cluster of knuckle-kisses. And I decided I was going to save him.

            But I sat there, grinning, looking mad, and his nose wrinkled. Even when his face scrunched disgustedly, a charm glowed about him. The skin over his nose was freckled and soft, and he looked like a rabbit scenting danger.

            “Stop smiling!” he demanded, and the top of the couch flickered suddenly. He turned around to watch Sid Vicious stretch out, awakened by Esme’s loud voice. The slants of afternoon light through the window played in bars and were filtered onto Esme’s face. They disappeared as Sid walked into the light, shadowing him. They stared at each other, the two feral creatures, gem-like eyes set on the same plane.

            Then Esme leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to Sid’s black dot of a nose. I felt my stomach drop.

            “I like cats,” Esme said, and pulled Sid Vicious onto his lap. The titular ‘Vicious’ dissipated. Even the animal seemed enchanted by this faerie-like creature sitting Indian-style on my couch, his long fingers—refined and thin but still childish—petting the small animal as he cooed at it in French.

            _I wish I’d be kidnapped._

            Call me a fucking genie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regardless of whether or not this gets anymore popular, thank all that have read it for reading it, no matter your opinion on this fucked-up shit.


	4. I DON'T HAVE FUCKING ANGER ISSUES!!!

A modern day warrior  
Mean, mean stride  
Today's Tom Sawyer  
Mean, mean pride

—"Tom Sawyer"  
Rush

* * *

 

            Now, a more unpleasant topic: Thomas.

            When I answered his post on Craigslist in request of a roommate, he responded with immediacy. I assumed he’d been rather desperate to reply to my 8:19 PM post at 8:27 PM. But he’s just addicted to the internet.

            Thomas curled up on a pink, frayed sofa with cavities of cigarette burns and typed on his laptop more often than not. When someone woke up and their default emotion was sad, you called that depression, right?

            What about when someone wakes up crying— _daily—_ what’s that? PTSD? There’s labels for everything, right? A cure in an orange tube. I’d love to diagnose him if I could just drug him out of his mind and shut him the fuck up, subsequently getting some sleep.

            Roofies usually did the trick.

            Right, well, it’s wrong, sure. But so were the Crusades, and that _happened_. Perspective matters, my friends.

            His room smelled like hot feces. Probably because of all the taxidermy. Which was how he made his living. We got complaints far too often, and dimly, I thought about how Jeffrey Dahmer got caught. I was waiting for the day he’d get hauled off to prison because those guts in the sink weren’t fox guts, but Suzie’s—or Jack’s, pretty sure he’s gay—and the stink would waft into a neighbor’s thin walls. Alas, no such luck.

            Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t care about animals. If you ask me about SeaWorld I’ll tell you about the time I waved at the stadium with a whale-shaped popsicle in hand when they showed me on the splash screen at age nine. Then I bit the whale’s head off and ate it. What have Orcas ever done for me? Saving the whales in this world is emptying a water bottle onto a burning house.

            But I don’t jack off to bestiality porn and Nazis—I’m not the one who had drunkenly admitted to fantasizing about Pomeranian penetration.

            Sid Vicious was a damn cool cat. He had spiky hair and white toes.

            Thomas wears specs with thick lenses that make his narrow eyes look less creepy and reptilian. Unlike Leonard, whose glasses made his eyes turn boyish, Leonard’s glasses mimicked that of a rodent. I really want to hit him with my car. He has a stupid varsity jacket despite standing five-foot-two and looking like a pallid string bean. Esme is taller than him, at a shocking five-foot-six, or maybe five-seven.

            There are plenty of things I could list on why I hate Thomas. Most of them can be bunked on personal opinion as to whether or not his other tendencies are acceptable. Drug use, daily complaints about family, his crippling depression that warranted ostentatious self-harm on his part and Tylenol abuse on mine. But that’d only irritate me further.

            Like I said, I don’t care for animals too much.

            The day was already bad. My anger was starting to concern me that weekend, because it might have resulted in high blood pressure, might result in a heart attack. I wasn’t ready for a heart attack at twenty-seven. I was tattooing a girl named Asher.

            Asher didn’t share her birth name and her hair was pink and her white scalp was a lightning bolt through the newly-dyed roots. It was perfectly even, her part. It looked like a plum after a knife’s been cleanly sawn through it, leaving her head plump and ready to tear, to reveal that little seed of a brain she must have in there somewhere.

            “So today I was out looking at clothes with my mom, which I hate, because being with my mother always ends up in fights, and she finds a shirt that she likes, and says to me ‘look at this nice shirt, but if I buy it, you wouldn’t even wear it?’ and she then walks away from me. Later on we decide to look at sneakers because I need a new pair, and she tells me the budget, but otherwise I can choose myself. I then find a pair of black Puma sneakers, and she said, ‘What is up with that color?’ and tells me to go put them back. So to top it all off, I got nothing today.”

            “Uh,” I grunted, “Wow.”

            “I hate my mom. She’s going to flip when she sees this tattoo!”

            “How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

            “Twenty-two. I _showed_ you my ID.”

            “Just making sure.”

            Thirteen girls in the past three months had all gotten a tattoo about non-conformity. They said: **HERE’S TO THE CRAZY ONES**. I wondered if that constituted those who also gossiped about their mothers to strangers and got tattoos.

            She kept stopping me to take pictures of the progress. When I was done dotting her skin, as firm and white as frozen milk, she harvested a wrinkled ten and a five and pushed them into the tip jar, then slid a credit card that was now deprived of $2,500. Fifteen dollars for my own personal spending.

            Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Napoleon Dynamite say _that’s like a dollar an hour_.

            Grandma gave more money on birthdays.

            When I came home, lightweight Thomas had vomited on the carpet, beige-colored liquid as thick as paint a puddle on the already-stained floor. His cheek was in it, and he was crying, knees pulled to his chest, cradling a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

            For once, I was tender. I leaned down and shook his shoulder.

            “Buddy, come on,” I said. “Stand up.”

            He hiccupped and a stream of puke dribbled out of his mouth and off his chin.

            I stood up and went into the bathroom, looking for carpet cleaner. Did I own any? I ought to. I bent under the sink cabinet and sought a rag and I heard a wretched, vibrating whine from my left. Looking up, the black flicker behind the transparent mesh of the shower curtain initially frightened me. Stephen King’s _It_ came to mind.

            I yanked the curtain back, and at first I almost shrieked because the tiny black dots of fuzz rolled. _Tarantulas_ , I thought, toes curling, heart racing. _Tarantulas fucked in my shower and now they’re taking over_.

            The yowl, again, and I looked toward the source of the flickering. Sid Vicious’s tail. The spots were fuzz. They were rolling because the sad Sid Vicious was batting his fur that had been shaved off.

            Half-naked, Sid Vicious looked up at me with green, sad eyes shrink-wrapped in tears. The skin that was inexpertly stripped was greyish beneath. My chest hurt. The earlier discussion with Asher was refuge compared to the racing of my heart. My knuckles went itchy. Hot redness pulsed in my eyes, my temples, my fingers.

            It took great effort on my part to be ginger when lifting my cat from the tub. His skin felt oddly silky, and I held him like a baby. He scratched at my arm, but I forgave him—after being handled previously, I wouldn’t be surprised to deem him traumatized.

            Setting him on his blanket, also printed with small cats, I let him yowl and shake for a moment. He sprinted off and hid under my bed. Closing the door behind me, I hunted my prey.

            When I checked the trashcan, blood boiling, two shiny tins of the beer remained. Three drinks and this was what he’d done.

            I returned to him, slid my Hawaiian shirt off, the one with red hot-rods and Route 66 signs that I’d bought at Galveston, and set it gently on the couch. I kicked him in the ribs, hard, harder, and listened to him cry, gurgling.

            “You pathetic mongoloid,” I decided on, toe of my boot crunching his ribs, “You stupid, worthless piece of shit. Why weren’t you aborted?”

            I remembered that he tried and failed to hang himself when he was sixteen and got in-patient treatment. Who could have thought to preserve this heinous piece of shit? Even if he’d been lying about it for attention, I threw it back in his face.

            I am not a nice person, I realized as he wailed, and I said, “You failed at killing yourself so I might as well do it _for_ you!”

            In retrospect, I should’ve. It would have eased the present situation by far. But I didn’t have a shotgun at that point.

            The door rattled. I looked over my shoulder and nailed one more kick to his ribs. Thomas spit up a gross geyser of more vomit and I turned on my heel, violent, vicious, physically shaking with high-strung potential and ripped the door open. “What?”

            The fat man Esme had observed only a week ago from that day was in the doorway. He arched his bald head over my shoulder and I propped my hip against the frame to mar sight of Thomas, curled and weeping wetly now.

            “What’s up?” I said as casually as I could, despite my voice adopting a vibrato of fury.

            Doug was a kind, older man of about sixty with a gray, finely-groomed mustache. He was divorced twice and his voice was abnormally soft for such a gruff, masculine shell. He rose his bushy eyebrows and nodded behind me.

            “Is he okay?”

            “No,” I said, “He’s a little drunk. I’m trying to get him up.”

            From the floor, Thomas croaked out, “Help me!”

            I rolled my eyes, and shouted at him, “Stop being so dramatic, you’re not dying!”

            Doug’s eyebrows hitched, almost touched, and then he nodded behind him. I took the cue and closed the door behind me, leaving Thomas alone. Alone with Sid Vicious.

            “The little French boy?”

            “Esme?”

            “Yes, him.” My heart leapt excitedly into my throat. My hysteria shifted to anticipation. I’d spoken to him exactly once since he’d sat in my apartment and described being domestically abused with a storytelling flourish so vivid I had sat in silence, in awe and horror. I’d waved at him as I passed him one morning when he was on his way to school and I was returning from the arcade. He wrinkled his nose at me—that cute thing he did always—and stepped into his mother’s black station wagon and yelled out, angelic: “Bye!”

            “What about him?”

            “He just approached me about you.”

            “What did he say?”

            Doug used my name when imitating him in a surprisingly accurate mimicry. “… ‘is my boyfriend.’”

            “He said that about _me_?”

            “Yuh-hup.”

            “And he meant me?”

            “That’s what I asked. ‘You mean…” He used my name again. “…the one that lives on my floor?’ ‘Yes, him. The one with the ugly shirts.’”

            I was smiling. The grin must have been feral, because Doug’s old, wrinkled testicle of a head crumpled in concern.

            “He said that?”

            “Yes—why would he say that?”

            My smile faded. Shrugging one shoulder, I said, “I have no idea. We’ve spoken once.”

            Doug’s lips disappeared beneath his mustache as he bit his lips. Forehead wrinkled in concern, cheeks reddish, the old man looked over me as if I was covered with blood.

_Why are you so nervous, Doug?_

_I’m not a pedophile or anything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my less appealing chapters, and a look inside the arrogant shithead that is our narrator. He's not quite all there, if you couldn't tell.
> 
> I'm getting to the actual kidnapping soon! I already have a few paragraphs of the next chapter written up. Thank you again to my few followers of the story. Your kind words and little kudos are more than enough to keep the story going! :')


	5. Sugar Lips, Cat Piss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long. I have a whole list of excuses:
> 
> I graduated high school. (Blows air-horn.)
> 
> I went to Cancun, which sucked, to be honest. I stayed in a resort with an eleven-year-old for a week, though, so hopefully I picked up on some writing tips for Esme, and the accuracy of the nature of kids. (Not in a creepy way. Sister of the friend I was with.)
> 
> Subsequently, I got sick as soon as I got home. Probably zika. I'll definitely die before I finish this now, thanks a lot, Mexico.
> 
> Also, I need to spend more time with my cat. Did you know they can get depression?
> 
> Without further ado, here's a long-ass chapter. I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Hopefully, I'll get to a quicker schedule from here on out.

Kiss me, please pervert me, stick with this  
Is she talking dirty?  
Give to me sweet sacred bliss  
Your mouth was made to suck my kiss.

—"Suck My Kiss"  
Red Hot Chili Peppers

* * *

 

            Wheat-colored hair caught the light of the apartment inside. Esme was a silhouette in front of the door, bent over the balcony. His ankles were crossed, as were his arms on the railing. Back bowed, he looked down at me—a modern Juliet.

            Ethereal, this child. Eros.

            I wanted to know everything and nothing about Esme. In a sense, to leave him now would be idyllic. He’d be as untouchable as some modern God, I supposed. Questioned after and a creature of forever speculation, to ignore him would make him a permanent virgin. It’d be less salubrious, yes. I figure he’d eat at my mind until I wept. He’d ruin everyone else in comparison.

            To know nothing of him would fill me with a dream-like awe in appreciation of the young creature. He was twelve in the modern age—didn’t that naturally warrant a taste for video games and Red Bull, for cargo shorts and YouTube? I didn’t want to think of him hunched in front of a laptop like Thomas. I didn’t want to think of him having a predisposition for Taco Bell or Chinese take-out.

            I wanted to imagine him walking along Marseille, hands in the pockets of some finely-crafted, expensive shorts, staring at carts of fish, markets lining the sea, offering fresh meat, fruit, vegetables. I wanted to think of him eating only croquembouche and beef bourguignon.

            I wanted him to spend his time on the beach, pale little knees in the sand, finely-crafted neck arched back as effervescent seafoam dotted his lightly-freckled face, sun lancing through a god-like amalgamation of gold-lined clouds, falling on his skin in splotches, like through oak trees.

            It’d be safer—to leave him and dream, and let him tear me apart inside, leave my mental foundation in ruins. To turn him into an idol, as idealized and untorn as a marble statue.

            We all yearn for the unknown. We all speculate on what we could have had and crafted more beauty in the theoretical, no matter how unrealistic.

            But I didn’t.

            I should have, but I didn’t.

            “You coming up?” he called out. His foot rocked, and his head tilted on his neck a few tics.

            “Are your parents here?”

            “My mom is.”

            I thought about it, then shook my head. I didn’t want to see his mother. The supposedly abusive one. I might have taken her head off. “Then come down.”

            “Why? Too— ” With his head turned behind him, facing the sliding doors of the apartment, I couldn’t see the face he made (pity!) but he straightened a bit and waved a hand in dismissal, as if remembering something. “Never mind, I’ll come down.”

            When he and I stood in the hall of the apartment complex, the fluorescent, urine-colored lights cast antiseptic shadows over his face. For a very fleeting moment, he almost looked average. I must have looked like a corpse.

            He leaned back against the wall. There was the body of a dead gnat, and a leaking brown liquidated mark on it. He still looked beautiful. “So,” he said, “What’s up?”

            I wondered if he knew my visit was urgent. Then I realized most twelve-year-olds didn’t just _hang out_ past six-o-clock on a week night—summer or not.

            “Do you know Doug?”

            “Yes,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking away from me. He was peering at the depth of the hall. I thought of _The Shining_. “I told him we were dating.”

            “Yes, I heard,” I said, rubbing at my temples in a show of faux-adulthood, masking my irresponsibility with a motion that my parents had used with me when I was a kid. “Why would you do that? He just approached me about it and thinks I’ve, like, convinced you of it or something.”

            He grinned, and shrugged. “Perhaps I wouldn’t have if you weren’t such a creep.”

            My mouth turned down. “What makes you think I’m a creep?”

            “I’m not stupid,” Esme said, cocking an eyebrow. “You beat around the bush a lot.”

            I didn’t say anything, tucking my lips beneath my teeth until the red bloomed a tight white. He brushed his hair back with the palm of his hand and offered a weak, meaningless smile. “You think I don’t know the effect I have?”

            “So, what? Are you trying to convict me or something?”

            He looked smug, excessively proud of himself. “So you admit it.”

            “Admit what? That we’re dating? I never said that.”

            “That you _want_ to.”

            As I stood there watching his oddly unreadable face, somehow cruel and inviting with the icy glare but soft upturn of his lips, I felt like hitting him, or maybe kissing him. I felt like tightening my hand around his throat and slamming his head back against the wall until his hair adopted splotches of red blood, white hair stained. And I thought about leaning down to catch his upper lip in mine, and I wondered if he was a good kisser. It struck me that I’d be delighted if he wasn’t—it’d make him far more virginal.

            Passion, that was it. Overwhelming passion—on both levels of the spectrum. My chest burned, and my heart felt as if it was swooped up on a hot string through my throat, searing me inside. But I was cool on the outside, maintaining the hard, glacial stare of a peeved adult.

            “You’ve gotta tell Doug that we’re not doing anything.”

            He shrugged. “Sure,” he said shortly, and the sincerity of that promise was lost on me. I’d bet it was nonexistent then, but it doesn’t matter now. I wish that was the only issue I now have.

            Maintaining that noncommittal face of nothingness, of no revealing, he nodded towards the door of his apartment. Gold numbers labeled his home. It was exciting as a phone number scrawled on your wrist in Sharpie. “Come on, I gotta show you something.”

            God, he was cool.

            I forgot about my earlier promise to stay away from his mother. Anticipation bled in me quick as a blood transfusion. I nodded.

            The living room of his apartment was a carbon copy of mine in structure, in lieu of vomit and blood stains, with a lack of classic rock and Kubrick movie posters. His mother wasn’t in the room, but a family picture sat on the table. She was a thin, beautiful woman with short-cut hair in a sharp, angular bob, the color of rabbit fur. His father was very tall, which explained Esme’s height, towering over his mother. He had a full face and a full belly that stretched out a grey shirt with a maple leaf printed on it. They were in a bar or something. Esme was seated beside them on a barstool, looking off to the side in what might be distraction, his eyebrows hitched but smile quirked nonetheless. His hand was resting on the back of the bar.

            They didn’t seem dysfunctional. Their home was as clean as a newly-presented resort suite, and about as personal. Generic paintings of flowers were on the wall, and their tables were dark red mahogany, carefully crafted. Everything seemed vaguely northeastern, and I wondered if that was a style in France. It must be hell, moving from France to the humid prairie of Dallas, Texas. I wanted to save him again, suddenly, looking at the brown leather couch so uncreased you might think no one has been seated in months, if at all.

            “You can sit,” Esme said, motioning to the couch. It translated to _don’t come into my room_.

            So I sat, with my elbows on my knees. The hole on the knee of my jeans caught the jutting bone of my elbow. When I sat up and plucked the loose threads suspended between the open mouth of my jeans, I read something I’d written over it years ago in red pen, the ink deep and embedded in these ancient jeans. It was very childish, very angst-riddled. I must have written it in my teenagehood, probably during math class, after a negative result on some calculus test: _FUCK LIFE!_

How embarrassing.

            Teenagers. Never liked them. I gauged that Esme had a good two or three years until he found out about ostentatious self-harm and Kurt Cobain. I wanted to fuck his asshole.

            I stuck my finger in the hole of my jeans and grinned a little at the motion in tandem with this thought, my eye squinting.

            Esme returned silently until he expelled an “okay” as he flopped down beside me. He was wearing socks with one hole in the heel.

            He tucked one beneath his ass. On his lap was a Moleskine journal cast in cherry red covers. He opened to one page of scribbles—and that was it. Just scribbles, black with a pen. Like some infant with a crayon. And how was one to praise it? _What a lovely tornado. Wonderful depiction of hair in a drain!_

            He paused on that page and stared at it very intensely for a bit. I had a dreadful feeling that he was going to attempt to pass it off as a piece of abstract art and I would have to commentate on it with a force falsity, all bleached teeth and thumbs up. But he said, very bluntly, “This is where I test my pen for ink.”

            “Mmh,” I nodded. What else was there to say about it?

            He flipped to another page.

            “Wait,” I said, halting his thin, white fingers from turning the page again. I bent over and took the Moleskine, and looked at a pen-ink depiction of a very average but very recognizable drawing. It was copied directly after an extremely recognizable image. I could see him looking from his computer screen to his paper, copying features the best he could. “Did you draw this?”

            “Yes.”

            The pursed lips cocked slightly up, the white hair defying gravity with excess gel. An amalgamation of necklaces slung around the open neck of a leather jacket, the one raised fist adorned with a single, gaudy ring.

            “You like Billy Idol?”

            “Yes!” he stared up at me with a grin. I realized I hadn’t seen him grin very largely before—he wore a retainer. The silver ring split his top row of teeth. “You know him?”

            “Fuck yeah, I know him. I’ve seen him live.”

            “Fuck off.” I hadn’t heard him cuss since he was trying to impress his American friend. I wondered, _are you trying to impress me?_ The job was long finished, little boy.

            “No, I mean it! In Las Vegas. He’s always in Vegas. I think he’s going to be there all summer this year, too. At the House of Blues.”

            “I need to see him.”

            “Ah, well—it’s twenty-one and up.”

            He elbowed me lightly. “You could sneak me in. I’m not that big.”

            “Are you kidding? You’re almost as tall as me.”

            “Then maybe I could convince them that I’m old enough.”

            “Not with that face.”

            “What about it?” His head tilted on his slender neck again. “Too young?”

            “Exactly. You’re a _cherub_.”

            “What, isn’t that a sex-baby?”

            Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Narrator, whatever the hell your name is, how are we supposed to believe this happy horseshit banter? Do you honestly expect me, a distinguished reader of fiction, to believe _your_ words?

            Let me tell you something: we _have_ something, me and this boy. We do. He’s funny and we both like Billy Idol. I knew it as soon as he pet my cat—there was something there for us. We’re meant to be together. Which is how we get back to real time. Well, in a bit. Now, you’ve got to trust my words. After all, aren’t you on my side?

            “Was that what you wanted to show me?” I asked.

            “No,” he said, and tucked both legs beneath his backside, and slouched over my legs to place the open journal on my lap. It slowly fanned closed. I never understood why anyone used these pretentious things. They couldn’t hold themselves open unless you cracked the spine. I supposed spiral notebooks didn’t fall into the hipster category—too commercialized and convenient.

            I opened it back up to the designated page and looked at him. He covered both his cheeks with his hands, fingers as slender and beautifully-crafted as a tree-branch, his skeleton prominent through his white but sun-kissed skin. Beneath those slightly splayed fingers, the lightly-freckled skin of his cheeks were reddish with blush.

            I read the page.

 _If our chemistry isn’t verbal_  
_It lies in stolen glances._  
 _If your smiles are the caresses,_  
 _Then the looks are my kisses._

            Not shockingly impressive if it wasn’t written by a twelve-year-old. Still, my chest bled color, and I felt my stomach turn in a hot swoop. I read it again and again, and I must have looked slow or illiterate. Perhaps I was too nervous to look up from the page. I can’t tell you even now what took me so long to lift my head up and drag my eyes away from the writing.

            “Is this for me?” I finally said. Then I looked up. He was also staring at the page.

            He put his hand on my knee, over _FUCK LIFE!_

            “Yes,” he said, and the word is a reminder, a fan of breath over my jaw, the out-take of air on the ‘S’ sound, the first piece of him that kissed me before his lips did.

            When he pressed his mouth to the skin of my jaw the first thing I felt was not exhilaration, but possession. A broad, romantic display like this couldn’t come from genuine feelings. As devastatingly dreamy as I am—oh yes, you know I am—I’m too smart to think I’ve really caught this angelic child’s attention with actual personality, with anything other than unbridled attention.

            A desperately insecure child from the start, as evident from the PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE, FRIEND WHOSE NAME I DO NOT KNOW, AND LOOK AT ME incident, this affection was born from the sweet glances and the smiles. He didn’t like me. He liked the attention. He liked what I could offer. And if it so happened someone caught sight of this piece of art before me, if someone more attractive than me—quite a difficult feat, I must admit—if someone more wealthy, if someone younger, smarter, funnier decided to pursue the child, they’d be getting this boy’s attention and his poetry in exchange for the nice glances, the approving smiles. He was an insecure little beast. He’d soon be ushered into house parties to impress whoever; he’d become a slave to the youth of society. I became furious at these faceless entities, intimidated by the mysterious potential.

            Weak, maybe.

            Maybe we’re two sides of the same coin crafted in Insecurity Factory. I turned my head to meet his lips. I wondered if he found my stubble foreign. I wondered if I was his first kiss, and I hoped desperately that I was, scorned the past mouths that may have landed where I did. His mouth moved with innocent uncertainty, fingers curling on my knee.

_I wish I’d be kidnapped._   
_My parents hurt me._   
_I hate school._

            _Yes_ , I thought, and tilted his chin up with my hand to kiss his small mouth. He made a whiny noise in the back of his throat, a soft, lovely whimper. His eyes were closed. When he opened his mouth, I almost choked. _No_ , I thought, _you cannot have done this before_.

            I prayed it was born of Hollywood screens, of pornographic research on late nights where these abusive parents disappeared.

            My worries were settled the slightest at the horrible attempt at a make-out session he offered. Still, I was frightened by this bravado. I knew he’d offer it to other men as easily as he offered it to me. I couldn’t have that. I touched the back of his head, settled my palm over his blond curls and lowered it to the base of his scalp. Such a nice, crafted skull. So childish and underdeveloped. I loved it, loved holding it.

            I could break it.

            We kissed for a long time, and I felt like I was sipping honey. It felt decadent and rotting, and unbelievably pure and sweet. It felt like downing sweet tea, or biting into licorice. I held him at one point, on my knee. Covering _FUCK LIFE!_

            What had I done to get this?

            We didn’t really have much in common. We weren’t—

            But why was I questioning it? I deserve it. My life’s shit. This was God’s gift. Here, have a spawn of mine to adore, sweet humble narrator, you deserve it. I purposely put you through a shitty childhood, a shittier adolescence, I purposefully gave you figures to despise in your life, to test you. Can you make it through it all? If so, you win a brand new twelve-year-old angel!

            We kissed for a long time. _Sorry, Doug,_ I absurdly said to myself at one point, and laughed and accidentally bit his tongue, which made him jerk away and laugh. I wanted to stay with him like this, all night, on the couch.

            “What?” he’d giggled.

            “Nothing. Stupid thought.”

            “Tell me.”

            “Nothing,” I repeated, and leaned in to kiss him again, but he turned his head. I whimpered, a little embarrassingly, and he bunched the cloth of my shirt in his tiny fist, yanking me forward.

            “Wait. I think my parents are coming home soon.”  

            “You said they were home earlier,” I mentioned.

            “I lied,” he said, and once again, his accent dissipated. He sounded strangely deadpan, and nasally, and American. It was a curious feature. I also noticed that his throat-clearing tic had vanished for the night.

            “That’s okay,” I said, and rubbed his back. I could feel the outline of his spine protruding from his skin, outlining the cloth. I wondered if there were sun-spots on his back, moles, maybe incipient acne as he transitioned into puberty.

            “You have to leave.”

            “Why?”

            “Because if my parents see me kissing a sixty-year-old on their couch, I’ll get skinned and flayed.”

            “I’m twenty-seven.”

            “More than a decade older than me!” He stood up. There was a dewdrop of spit balancing on his chin. I would kill to lick it off.

            Esme opened the door and I looked at him once in the eye, watched him smile, watched his freckled cheeks kiss the slope of his bottom eyelashes and I leaned down for another kiss. He returned it, almost.

            And then I was back out in the summer evening, oppressive and all-consuming, but I liked it that way. Cicadas shrieked and the highway north of the apartment complex buzzed loudly under the roll of tires. The world around me seemed as alight as I was.

            I was in too good of a mood to just return home. I didn’t want to come home to my shaved cat and my vomit-stained floor and my weepy roommate just yet. It’d bring me down. I was—no, I _am_ —the boyfriend of Esme Blanchet.

            I can’t remember the last person I dated.

            I can remember my last _date,_ which was with a sixteen-year-old boy named Jacob who had a mop of red hair. It was when I realized that just because I’m a pedophile doesn’t mean I like everyone underage. There is a certain level of intoxication a child carries that attracts the adult eye. I’m sure Nabokov’s written some study of it.

            Esme is one of those boys appointed by fashion magazines to their cover pages, set in black and white. He’s more of an artistic study of youthful, ethereal beauty, the kind that attract movie agents and priests and Leonardo da Vinci types. Immortal in his appearance but also the type to die once his looks fade—or die before they do, and engrave them in history, cast them in amber, and become an icon. James Dean. River Phoenix. Kurt Cobain.

            And I was—am—dating that. He said so himself.

            I took my car to a gas station and bought myself a chill, sweating bottle of orange soda for the weather and a double-decker banana Moon Pie. The cashier had constellations of acne on his face and green eyes. When he told me to have a nice day, his breath was aromatic of an indelible halitosis.

            The people behind me in line were withered, tired copies of each other in different skins, arms nurturing bundles of junk food and feminine products, school supplies and wine. Their kids might be happy, but not for long, as soon as they realize their dicks can get hard. What did they have to look forward to?

            That evening, I had something to look forward to.

            I drove home and sat in late traffic, sipping soda despite the stigma that I might be washing out the taste of Esme’s tongue. I put in my _Pet Sounds_ CD. They seemed fitting, the summer bunch of the Beach Boys. You know, ignoring abuse and schizophrenia and lyrics.

            Hee-hee—foreshadowing!

            Oh, yes!

            I came home that night and there was no weepy roommate. I didn’t mind. I unwrapped my snack cake and ate it as I walked to my room. Sid Vicious’s bed was empty. Perhaps he was shivering beneath the bed, traumatized from his lost tufts of fur.

            I bent down. Only water bottles and pills, a Rolling Stones magazine, a gift card to Red Lobster for twenty-five dollars from my aunt. I pocketed it.

            “Sid?” I cooed in baby-cat-voice, cheek bulging with a bolus of artificially-flavored banana and marshmallow. “Siddy-kitty?”

            When I got to the bathroom to drain myself of the earlier Fanta Orange, I flipped open the bowl.

            And I screamed.

            And I puked up a banana Moon Pie on my dead cat’s corpse, the shaved thing floating in a bowl of pale urine.

            And I also cried.


	6. Interlude

            (Now, dear reader—this isn’t who you think this is. This is the other person you care about. Or don’t care about. You think I like this? You think I like some loser twenty-seven-year-old who likes The Doors and Jimi Hendrix and Stanley Kubrick like every _other_ twenty-seven-year-old with a taste for nostalgia, who _maybe_ dropped LSD in college and claims to have been ‘awakened?’ Awakened, but unsuccessful, going through the daily routine of every other twenty-seven-year-old? Christ, how pathetic. Oh, but this fuck magnified the failure levels. He's _also_ a pedophile. But get this: he’s _hot_. I just felt like telling someone. I can't see much in the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me. And I think he'd like that sentence very much, I do.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd be willing to peg Eve would have been a thirteen-year-old boy in the Bible if boys could give birth.


	7. Sour Patch

Ooh, you cannot reach me now   
Ooh, no matter how you try.  
Goodbye cruel world, it's over.  
Walk on by.

—"Waiting for the Worms"  
Pink Floyd

* * *

 

            Cats can get depression.

            I wonder to myself as the gold lights of street lamps illuminate Sid’s body if I spent enough time with him, if I fed him enough, if I played with him enough—if he was legitimately happy with me. Like a child. I want to think that he lived a good life. But he probably didn’t. He heard me scream too much, heard Thomas weep too much, heard the toe of my boot crunch against his bones, heard the splash of vomit in the toilets, heard my heavy metal and psychedelic rock soundtracked by my vicious mumbling beneath the blankets, mouth pressed to the mattress.

            He probably lived a long, disturbed life intercepted with pockmarks of relief when Thomas was out and I wasn’t losing my mind.

            My chest swells violently with something like melancholy, pricking out pins of sadness.

            I’m a bad dad.

            Owning a cat is kind of like owning a kidnapping victim that’s developed Stockholm syndrome. They’re restricted to your limitations, they want to leave, but they come back on your demand in fear of repercussions, trusting that you, and only you, can take care of them. You feed them and love them and they do nothing with their life but give you some minor comfort in pleasure of forced living-interaction. You’ve deprived them of their family, you’re a creature foreign to them that they’ve adjusted to not on their terms, but on yours, because you’re the one that chose them.

            But you can make them happy. They purr, they rub against you, they appreciate you. Their small chirping noises of satisfaction when you pet their back long enough for them to fall into sleep can provide an adjustment to this strangeness because while it is strange, it’s not evil. And they die knowing that you’re everything to them—you were their whole life. They weren’t too dependent, too eager to please, but they were just right enough to pretend you had a relationship with something not entirely animal.

            And you provide safety and satisfaction in that life.

            And I _still_ fucked it up.

            There’s a deep-seated pain in my sternum, some cold pressure that I used to feel as a kid. I’d get it when hanging out with my friends—the few I had—and it was a feeling of longing. I wanted to go home, I wanted to be in bed, knees pressed to my chest, fetal. I wanted to be mom’s baby. When I went to my dorm for the first week, it was a constant niggling pressure sinking into my upper stomach. I always curled up when I felt that, back arching roundly over myself, arms locking over my skinny calves.

            Baby.

            I don’t know where I’m going. The shotgun behind me slides when I make a U-turn. Oak trees canopy over the road, odd for Dallas, and I realize I have no idea where I am. My blurry tears smear the few brake lights ahead of me into red watercolor droplets. I hit the brakes at a red light a bit too hard and Sid jerks in his seatbelt.

            I have to get rid of him. Before he bloats and blow flies and maggots swarm him. A horrible thought, my only friend slouched in my car seat, dead with his mouth agape, chunks of his fur peppering the porcelain of my bathtub, being nipped away. A life wasted, and its death feeding even more wasteful life.

And then, I have nothing.

            There is nothing in my work that invokes a need for permanence. I’m not even an artist—I’m a typographer. I’m tired of inking _Just Breathe_ on the ribcages of twenty-somethings. My mother is dead; my cat is dead. I’m a baby in a carriage, unpushed, uncradled. If I sound dramatic, it’s an understatement—I’m _ruined_.

            I think of _Fight Club_.

            “It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

            As I roll along past short cubes of fast food joints, as the ever-present orange construction signs stare harsh and neon into my windshield, I dimly think about how sad I am in Dallas, Texas. How oppressively hot it is, and dry in the summer. This irritating brightness slants into my eyes like a hard flashlight every morning. I wake up in a second skin of sweat, mouth dry.

            And I think so myself as this anger grows in me, spreading like a tendril of red paint in a jar of water, _where is Thomas going? Where has he gone? Is he hiding? Does he have anywhere to go?_

            Is he driving away?

            Can he drive? He can’t.

            Has he anyone to stay with? He doesn’t. He’s absconded.

            Leonard gave me a shotgun.

            I’ve lost everything.

            I pull onto the shoulder of the street behind a small suburban house, white painted walls tangled with ivy, bushes tended to and white curtains drawn. I don’t know what neighborhood I’m in. The soft gold light shining through the windows of the home flick off softly. It makes me think of a young girl’s beside lamp. A wrought-wire fence reveals the meat of a bougainvillea glabra, a flowering genus of ostentatious vines and flowers, deep fuchsia. I could see it: tiny Sid Vicious rolling in the grass, legs pulled close to his body, long neck arched back to nose at the aromatic cup of flowers that sway in the nighttime breeze. He’d be slant-eyed and happy here. It doesn’t matter who lives in the house. The ghost of my cat isn’t harmful—and he’d prefer frolicking in some forever garden tended to with care than he would in the prison of my vomit-stained apartment.

            I bend to the door of my stupid Nissan and open it, hefting my little boy in my arms. My pet, my friend, my coping mechanism. My victim, too. And me, to him: his father, his hero. How sad it must be to be a cat.

            Meow.

            Setting the cold, stiff creature in a patch of soft grass, I watch the bathroom light of the home play through the bougainvillea and I feel sick when the ray illuminates a patch of grey skin. I swallow and turn my eyes up at the garden. Honestly, I’m ashamed. It always feels slightly offensive to be in the presence of the dead, like being alive is a privilege. Now I can’t even look at the victim of a shit life, a life I put this poor victim in. Like he’s a burn victim or a cancer patient, I’m overwhelmed with humiliation for my health. For the state of being alive.

            For a while I just watch my little boy lay on the ground stiffly, pointedly avoiding his face, focusing on the pink of his feet. It feels pathetic, standing behind some stranger’s backyard, setting my dead cat down in what’s supposed to be reverence. I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps something grandiose and deferential, respectable. But it’s an ugly image. I’d have liked it filmed by some artistic cinematographer, brilliant and powerful of creating the image I had in my mind—dreamy and harsh instantaneously. Instead it’s a disposable camera with flash on.

            My eyes are dry now, but the skin beneath them are red rings of exhaustion that tickle sensitively under the brush of my wet, clumped eyelashes from the earlier weeping, sobbing chokes of disbelief and anger. Now I’m numb.

            In my car I continue home.

_What do I have?_

            Nothing.

_What do I have to lose?_

            *

            Rage is energizing. The last day at my Sorel apartment and I can’t think of what to bring with me on my road to death. One pillow tucked beneath my arm, my laptop, television, windows, and phone thoroughly smashed and destroyed, I realize I don’t have much I like. There are records and comics but I’ve heard them and read them. Stupid, I guess. I don’t know why I spent so much money on these. I can get them both free online. Support the artists, right?

            There are books. I choose Tim O’Brien’s _Going After Cacciato_. And then _Lord of the Flies_. The last one I choose is one I haven’t read yet. Jean Cocteau’s _The Holy Terrors_. I suppose in manhunt time, there are stretches of boredom where you can do nothing but wait. Like sniping a deer. In which I can read chapters of incest.

            Books are sedatives. Preferable to reality. But you already know that.

            I forgo my pills. I bring three pairs of socks, two pair underwear, three shirts, two pairs of pants. Stuff them in a gym bag frosted with dust. I withdraw all my money from various savings accounts and deposit them on my main account—which is still a _college_ checking account, which Chase has yet to penalize me for maintaining, for whatever reason. I do this with the community laptop downstairs.

            At an ATM at the gas station where I’ve bought the Moon Pie (now mush on the tiles), I withdraw thirty-two-thousand dollars. My entire life savings. All I have to my name. Bill after bill is spit out and I hope to myself no one is watching me thumb through these stacks under the hard fluorescent light where moths play madly, looking like scribbles of modern art.

            My wallet fattens. I stare at my ID. Mouth skewed in a simper, eyes squinted and one hard red pimple blistering my nose above a mustache I’ve long since shaved, I look like a pedophile. My greasy hair is only to my shoulders in this one, limp and straight, unlike now. Back then, I didn’t have a job.

            I’m going to look like this if I leave. But who’ll care? I think I was happier back then, anyway, living in my mom’s house, unperturbed by anything, getting the mail daily in hopes of seeing the little neighbor kid with black hair and green eyes.

            I know who’ll care.

            One more trip back to Sorel and the electric razor hums with me. By the time I’m done a halo of fuzz in the sink matches Sid’s in the bath. It seems sacrificial. I feel prideful.

            I feel like Jesus Christ. I ball the long hair in both hands and toss it up. It rains down in an itchy storm.

            Then I touch my eyebrows.

*

            Googling ‘how to make chloroform’ sounds like a bad idea. And you’d be right. It’s also cheesy, predictable, and it’s usually only applicable for unwilling victims. I am now comparable to an alien, or some mad raving dictator. Smooth as a baby, bare and disturbing, and still sharp. I look slightly Russian. I try the accent in the mirror.

            “My name is Ivan, and I’m looking for chloroform.”

            I break into mad little giggles and brush my neck free of tendrils of brown, greasy hair. And I hurl a blow dryer into the mirror. The polychromatic spray of glass in the light glints harsh and so I turn the light off and keep looking at my face. I don’t look like myself.

            I touch my cheek, and drag my palm over a prominent jaw I never knew was so unique. I don’t look reminiscent of my mother anymore. I grin at myself. One of my front teeth is bigger than the other.

            My impulse control has dissipated.

            We’ve never needed pliers for anything in our life, but I bought a pair a long time ago, when I was eighteen and moving into my dorm. I bought carpet cleaner, Liquid Plumr, scissors, a hammer, and other tools. I was so responsible.

            And then I wasn’t.

            And now I’m free. There is nothing left. _I never have to go to work again_ , I think, grabbing the pliers from beneath the sink counter in the kitchen. _I never have to live in Dallas again, I never have to pay rent. I never have to tie my hair back. I never have to buy cat litter_.

            Placing the jaws of the pliers on my front tooth, I stare at the wall.

_I never have to see Thomas again._

            But that’s not good enough.

            I squeeze the levers so they hold my tooth in place, even though they’re slippery with my spit, maintaining the consistency of a pebble in a pond. The tendons of my hand bulge significantly.

            The syrupy stream of blood comes after the tooth clatters to the counter, dripping much less than I’d imagined. Three droplets track up to the tooth like foot prints, tiny impact splashes dotting the main pools of blood, like tiny suns.

            I know what I want to do.

            I can do anything I want.

            —I want to kill Thomas.

            I want to fuck Esme Blanchet.

*

            My teeth ache and the air conditioning of the apartment is colder than usual. It’s probably because I’m hairless. The vents spit icy breaths at the back of my neck. I twitch. It’s the breath of God, ushering me out. Get, get, go, go, it’s time.

            I chew a bolus of sour sugar slowly, meditating on the blank slate of the table in front of me. It is the only thing in the apartment untampered with. Even the toilet seat has been hurled into the wall, leaving a gaping hole in the dry plaster.

_First they’re sour, then they’re sweet._

            That’s not how manipulation usually works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give me some hot spicy feedback, y'all. Love you.


	8. Always Doing What You're Told

Not to touch the earth  
Not to see the sun  
Nothing left to do, but  
Run, run, run.  
—"Not to Touch the Earth"  
The Doors

* * *

 

            The longer I wait, the further away Thomas gets. My blood pumps boiling water when I think of him, white hot tendrils of fury bleeding through my body like some alien parasite. One of my friends from college was always so calm. I remember him now—no… it was the summer before college. I was seventeen. We were walking out of a record store, _Animals_ in my grasp, and this guy came storming from the adjacent James Coney Island restaurant. They approached each other and Hot Dog Man decked him in the face, blabbering something about stolen dope. I heard the wet smack of skin on skin and watched the spittle spraying from his mouth catch the dusk light before it splattered my friend's face like a Jackson Pollock painting.

            My friend, Jules, popped his jaw, shrugged one shoulder coolly, and took the smoke that was tucked behind his ear to place between his lips. He said to Hot Dog Man: “ _Slide_.” He flicked on his lighter and Hot Dog Man blinked, snarled violently and backed off. He promised something as a consequence for the track marks speckling the bend of Jules's elbows. Jules didn't care.

            I wish I could be like that.

            I’m thinking about this as I approach Esme’s door. His parents must be home by now. I have the shotgun in my hand.

            Newly surging with the need to make a difference in my life, I find myself face to face with the door and aware of the fact I have no more fear of confrontation. But then—have I ever? I can’t remember.

            _Knock. Knock. Knock._ A serial killer’s fist on the hardwood, a horror movie sound effect.

            A laugh track inside, and then a bassline. _Seinfeld_. My mom used to love it. The telltale shuffling of someone standing up, tentatively, and I slap my hand quickly over the peek-hole. No one is going to answer for a bald, eyebrow-less alien with a high-powered weapon in hand.

            Inside:

                        “Do you see…?”  
                        “No, can’t tell…”

            Neither of the voices are Esme’s. They sound incontestably Dallas-born.  That strong twang, harsh and gritty and famous to the world as a staple of Texas although it never spreads to the other large municipalities. Painful, really. It’s not that slow, sweet tone Alabamans use, not the interesting and Slightly-French quirk of Cajuns, gritty and slutty. It’s hard and unforgiving, just like the atmosphere of Dallas. If they weren’t targets for other reasons, they’d still die for being in the range of my shotgun and maintaining those accents.

            There’s turquoise jewelry in the background. White pajamas and big bouffant blonde hair, a staple of the Dallas woman. She’s peeling off a fake eyelash when her husband opens the door. These two do not look like abusers—at least not physically.

            With a stained white t-shirt tucked into too-small Adidas shorts, white ankle socks and a pair of glasses, Esme’s father makes my skin crawl.  He has a potbelly and pallid skin exclusive to most office job employees. Three days’ worth of stubble dots his face and neck, and he has graying blond hair cut short on top of his head. He’s probably not a bad person outside of allegedly beating his kid—he looks far too boring and soft-faced to be capable of cruelty.

            He gives me the creeps solely because he’s reminiscent of every father. It terrifies me that Esme may be the product of something average.

            “Can…”

             I think of Will Smith when I shoot him in the head, I think of the Fresh Prince of Belair’s graffiti in the theme song, because the mist of blood behind him stains his wife’s face like spray paint. It’s a surreal little thing and my ears ring with the warm hum you get post-concert. Grey brain matter slips down the bridge of his nose and he flops down on his stomach, bouncing a bit.

            Except I don’t _really_ shoot him in the head.

            I blink a few times to clear my fantasy.

            “Can I help you?” his voice is wary, and not at all French.

            “Um. Uh.”

            “Is that a… a weapon?”

            My mouth cracks into a crooked grin, the empty gap of my tooth still a fleshy red sore. I’m usually pretty good with voicing my thoughts, but now I stutter out, “Th-th-this is Texas!” My laugh trails into a giggle.

            He blinks, unamused, with concern crinkling the long-drawn lines of his lumpy forehead. “Is it a shotgun?”

            I look down at my hand, as if surprised by this newfound weapon, raising my eyebrows—or I would if I had any. “Oh my!”

            Stepping behind the door protectively, fat fingers clutching the doorknob until his knuckles whiten, he eyes me. Behind him, the strong Dallas accent I expected from Esme’s mother: “Brian?”

            Brian tries to shut the door but I stick my boot between the frame, something I’ve never done but now learn hurts like a bitch. I can’t maintain an actor’s serenity, and I wince. “Hey, man, I just wanna talk to you real quick.”

            “I don’t feel comfortable with you holdin’ a weapon.” His voice is stern now, controlling. He must be a manager. 

            “Uh… okay…” I lift a finger in a telltale example. As in: _this is what I'll do for you._ Infomercial salesman.

            I look down the stairwell that loops to the bottom floor and hang my upper body over the railing, and then loosen my grip. The shotgun clatters dangerously against the stairs. It doesn’t go off, but the sound it makes when it hits the concrete would make any gun collector wince.

            “Jesus Christ!” Brian barks.

            “You told me to get rid of it!”

            I’m sixteen again, rationalizing my impulses with my father.

            He's half out of his door, curious despite the present danger, perhaps on the brim of acting. His body is stiff with bound-up anxiety. “It’s not real, is it?”

            “Nah,” I say, scratching my head, the skin under it a strange texture of a thousand pinpoints of hair. I offer a soft chuckle. “It would’ve gone off if it was real. I wouldn’t have thrown a real shotgun. I'm not an amateur. It’s a movie prop. You see, I'm a bit of an artist.”

            Brian says nothing. I take this time to come up with an excuse.

            “You must think I look like a lunatic!” I grin.

            “I… Well, yes, it’s an odd sight.”

            “Understandable,” I giggle, waving a hand in front of my face as if to dismiss any notion of oddity surrounding my appearance. “I’m so sorry to bother you so late, but I just found your address after knocking on each door. My name is Jim Pollock.”

            He blinks.

            “Maybe you’ve _heard_ of me?”

            “No, no…” he sounds edgy about it, though, eyes tilting up past his glasses and narrowing with the slightest hint of skepticism, and the shame of an uncultured middle aged man, a reminder that he might have, back in college, wanted to major in something less systematic than business or computer tech. “Pollock?”

            “Jackson Pollock’s grandson—it’s a pleasure.”

            Which is how I end up on Brian Blanchet’s couch with a cup of tea and a grinning wife, her mouth wrapped in plastic, one of those whitening strips. I grin back, tonguing the wound in my mouth, which makes her laugh, and so I laugh.

            They seem honored—does Jackson Pollock even _have_ a child?

            I don’t like tea all that much but I finish the hot water, only half-steeped, in a matter of seconds. And I crunch the barely-dissolved sugar cube in the back of my teeth.

            “What brings you here?”

            “I’m a painter, too. Following in my grandfather’s footsteps. Now, I know my dad never painted, and it’s a shame. He went into business.”

            A shameful duck of Brian’s head.

            “I was wondering—well, I’m just exploring, see—I was wondering if I could paint your son.”

            “You want to paint him?”

            “Yes.”

            “Our son?”

            “Yes.”

            “ _Our_ son?”

            Exasperated, now wishing I’d just taken the shotgun route: “Yes!”

            “Well, I could… Talk to him.”

            Brian stands up and walks down the hall to what I assume must be Esme’s room, the one I haven’t seen. He raps the door gently with his knuckles and it opens from the inside. In the twin format of our rooms, he stays in the Thomas-suite. I wince a little in spite of myself. A short exchange. I catch a bite surrounding the subject of politeness.

            He comes out as beautiful as ever. I sit back and smile at him.

            He doesn’t recognize me, just walks closer and sits down carefully beside me. Then he looks me up and down and goes, “What the fuck?”

            “Felix!” scolds his mother.

            “What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

            “Felix?” I echo.

            “Jesus, man, your hair!”

            “Do you two know each other?” Brian says.

            “Wait, _Felix_?”

            “Your eyebrows!”

            “How do you two…?”

            “I thought you were…” I tilt my head. Am I in the wrong house?

            “Oh my god, is your tooth gone?” Esme sits on his knees and sticks a finger in my mouth, tugging my lip up to peer at it in horror. I snarl to give him a better view. “You look like an earthworm.”

            It’s such an odd and kid-like thing to say that I grin, unoffended. “My name’s Jim Pollock, and I want to paint you.” It comes out garbled because of Esme/Felix’s fingers invading my mouth.

            “What the hell are you talking about?”

            “Watch your language!” scolds Brian, still perturbed by this exchange, if that agape jaw is anything to go by.

            Esme pulls his fingers from my mouth and I chase after them, and God I love him, I love him. His eyebrows, thin and blond, hitch and he touches my noteyebrows next. “Jim Pollock?”

            “Felix?”

            We stare at each other, accusatory and challenging with an air of jovialness between us. I’m wild inside, waiting for more, but my hands stay still at my side, my mouth not yet broken into a wicked grin, cold and unmoving. My body’s a mirror of my apartment. A protecting outer shell. The landlord and the parents are the only reasons my walls haven’t crumbled—metaphorically and literally.

            Lucky for Felix/Esme, because I’d be tearing off his clothes right now if not for the helicopter parents.

            Jesus, I’m a parent’s nightmare. And they’re here, and it’s still going to happen, and their hearts will be broken, and forever and ever will this situation eat at them. This last happenstance. _If only!_ they’d think, on repeat. If I was capable of it, I might feel sympathy. And even if I could feel sympathy, I’d still do it.

            “Felix,” says Brian, “Do you know this man?”

            “Yes, I know this man.”

            “Care to explain?”

            And because if there was a God he’d love me, Esme unfolds from the couch and faces his parents, robotically, craning his neck from one to the next. I watch his fingers twitch and his chest expand under the cloth of an unmarked white t-shirt. It’s fury.

            “Can I speak to him alone for a second?”

            They stay stagnant, and Esme nods towards the door. I stand up, give them both a formal handshake, and follow Esme outside. The finalizing slap of the door against the frame makes me exhale. 

            When he looks over his shoulder, after stopping at the railing, his face is frozen in such an icy look of complete hatred that I jolt. I’ve never seen someone look so sour and disgusted without looking cartoonish. Face stern and steely, he resembles a man dealing with a child his age—not a child his age.

            “What are you doing here?” he demands with a hiss, his fingers curled on the rails. I want them back in my mouth, I want to map the knuckles of them carefully with my lips.

            A diversion, quick: “Jesus, your parents are— _annoying_.”

            “Yes. Yes, I know.”

            Good. His admission doesn’t make me sound like a dick. I hate man-to-man gossip when the other participant isn’t willing, or takes the subject’s side. Makes you feel the shame you should be feeling when talking shit about the unknowing, polite people who gave you tea.

            I need to dig more personally. “I bet you he says, ‘when I was your age’—or, more appropriately, ‘I did the same things, I’ve felt the same things.’”

            “Yes.”

            “And it’s invasive, right? Like he’s dulling down your experiences because he’s also felt that at one point. He’s smoothing out those sharp new feelings because _other_ people have felt it.”

            “Yes… But so are you. You’re empathizing with me. So you’ve also felt those things.”

            “Uh.”

            “So you’re doing the same thing as him.”

            “Uh,” I say, eloquently.

            “You’re not gonna be a kid again,” he says, and puts his hands on his hips, “Just because you spend time with me. I know you’re trying to grasp onto those last shreds of youth, but it’s not going to happen because you associate yourself with me.”

            He’s too smart for his age. I change the subject, because the comment stings—am I that easy to read? “You have no accent.”

            “You have no hair.” Yes, I still love him.

            “Your name is Felix.”

            “Your name is Jim Pollock?”

            “No, it’s not. Identity protection.”

            “From my parents? Why? What’s the point of all this?” he motions to me as a whole, and it stings again. I feel chastised, red-faced. As if I’ve just been pointed out on the playground. What even _is_ this kid? Do we _have_ to play with him? What’s he _doing_? I want to shuffle my feet or hide my face. I don’t like this iciness from Esme. I can deal with a brat, but not the truth.

            “I need to show you.”

            Esme blinks, nonplussed. He makes no move to respond with those quick, curt snaps that he’s been offering. I can’t tell if that calms or inflames my insecurity more.

            I start walking, and he stays put. A “come on” elicits no reaction. For some reason, staring at him standing still infuriates me. I feel my throat tighten in a telltale anger-sob. When I demand it again, “Come _on_!”—

            He's marble.

            “Please!” I cry, and the tears singe my freshly-shaved face, “I need to _explain_!”

            Esme walks forward with the tentative gait of a prisoner beckoned by a warden, unsure of his fate. It hurts to see—he doesn’t trust me. But why should he? Suddenly my tears dissipate as fast as they came. I swallow and then grin in a giggle, my nose turned up, eyes squinted like I’m making a face at a baby. It makes him pause again. The pert slope of his nose wrinkles and he looks over his shoulder, as if gravitating towards comfort, familiarity. But isn’t that what he’s afraid of? I need to play off of that.

            “I promise you,” I say, continuing towards the staircase, more care-free and not childishly beckoning. That’d incite skepticism, he’d know I’m luring him in desperation and not through friendliness. I wish I could say something and do something without premeditation _. It’s a side-effect of being organized_ , I joke to myself. “We both need a break.”

            I doubt he knows what this means, but he abandons all sense of danger and shrugs.

            As we walk towards the shotgun, I lean down and pick it up, not missing a step. He doesn’t comment on it, and he keeps walking. Is he resigned to a murderous fate? Or is he seeking excitement? Does he think it's fake as his father does? The artificial scent of honeysuckle from the planted bushes lining the wrought-iron fence to my right will always be the aroma reminiscent of this fateful day. We walk through the carefully planned paths leading to where my car is parked.

            I level my shotgun on the plane of his face when I turn around. He blinks, and the skin of his round face thins out—I suppose he’s biting his cheeks. He rocks back on his heels, and then stabilizes himself. I made my voice as deep as I can manage and demand it: “Get in the fucking car.”

            “No.”

            We go silent. My fear had lain in seeing him cry, or hearing him scream, or trying to catch him when he runs.

            Instead, he just crosses his arms and cocks an eyebrow challengingly. I hate him all over again. There’s something in the rebellious press of his lips and the raise of his eyebrows that makes my toes curl the way bad kids do to the viewers of those Dr. Phil shows, on _Brat Camp_.

            He clears his throat the way he did seemingly forever ago, when he was telling me how much he hates school. The cords in his neck are stiff and he makes no move to run.

            “Your parents don’t beat you, do they?” I say.

            He smirks, self-satisfied, his cheek dimpling a bit, and I love him again. “I never said that— _ahem_. I said they hurt me.”

            “Get in my car.”

            “No,” he repeats, carefully. I cock it.

            “Get in, Felix.”

            “Make me.”

            “I—I _am_! I have a shotgun pointed at you!”

            “So?”

            What the fuck is _wrong_ with this child?

            “So get in the car or I’ll kill you!”

            “You’re bluffing.”

            FUCK!

            I have to apologize for earlier—the chloroform comment, I mean. I really do wish I’d made some. It’s not cheesy. For all the past kidnappers, it’s not. You guys were right. I’m losing control. Not that I ever really had any. This is all only working by chance. Extreme chance. It’s surreal. Dreamlike. My victim is across from me, suspended in amber like some ancient bug. In my reach. And I have the hook to peel him out and cradle him close before some museum collector takes him from me. But I can’t. I’m frozen, all because he said “no.”

            I lower the gun and blink rapidly. My heart lodges in my throat. If he runs, I’m fucked. I am approaching a deer on high alert.

            “There is no point to your life in this moment,” I say carefully, holding out a hand in front of me in surrender. He crosses his arms over his chest. The skinny bends of his elbows look like a nice nook for the flat of my tongue to lie, nestled and warm. “You are going to go back home and discuss this odd happenstance for the rest of your life, and mull over the ‘what-could-have-been’s. You’re going to grow old and normal and just like your father if you go back now. You’re going to go back to school and do math homework, see the same boring faces. You’re going to grow old and boring and fat and your joy and potential will disappear.”

            I don’t know if this rant will work. Twelve-year-olds are usually content to face the prospect of repetition as long as they’re guaranteed juice boxes and a tree to climb or (in these modern years), an Xbox to play. But Esme/Felix is advanced. I feel as though he’s dived headfirst into the prospect of existentialism. He’s an idiot and brilliant at once. A dichotomy of understanding everything and simply not caring for what’s presented to him with a wagged finger. He wants more from life according to the earlier confessed anxiety.

            And that “more” can be some ruinous path—at least it’s a path and not a stagnant waiting room.

            It is this, and not my shotgun, I realize, that ushers him into the Nissan. When his leg pulls up into the passenger's seat, his bare toes curl. I slam the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I attended college orientation. It was some REAL BULLSHIT. I'm gonna off myself when sharing this dorm. Or perhaps I'll pull a Yet-To-Be-Named-Narrator against my own Thomas. My roommate-to-be has been texting me pictures of room decor ideas. I'd rather tongue a rusty knife than get a doormat that says "Hey What's Up Hello" on it. Whatever. Just felt like sharing with the readers. You all already know me better than most people now that you've read this story.


	9. Papa Papa Papa Papa Pappa-san, Take Me Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foot stuff. Sorry.

It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice

—"Straight to Hell"  
The Clash

* * *

 

            Felix’s foot is on my face. He’s an American boy. His foot is soft and cold on my cheek. I’ve never really been into feet. In the passenger’s seat, his back faces the door, and his mile-long legs have sprawled over into the driver’s to rest on my face. He laughs gently when the swoop of my eyelashes brush his skin like a butterfly kiss. I turn the knob so my brights come on. The shotgun is in my lap.

            The radio blinks orange in a glowing slit. Peering past his toes, his green eyes flecked with indelible brown speckles, the orange glow turns his eyes catlike and all-seeing. I grab his ankle and ease his foot off me.

            “Tell me about Esme Blanchet.”

            Felix grabs a curl of blond angel hair and pulls it straight to his chin. At his scalp the hairs bloom brown. I sigh, a true thing of disappointment in which lighted nerves bloom in the pit of my stomach and eat at my fingertips. I flex my hand on his ankle and he pulls his leg back to tuck it to his chest. It seems as easy as I shed my mask, it’ll take me some time to peel the paint from his.

            “Tell me about Esme Blanchet,” I repeat. Felix stares at me. “Tell me about Esme Blanchet. Tell me about Esme Blanchet. Tell me about Esme Blanchet.”

            Felix releases his hair and it springs back up. He puts his foot back on my face.

            I whine. He curls his toes and slumps lower in his seat, cocking an eyebrow at me. Even when he tucks his chin to his chest in defiance, being the child he is, no extra skin bulges around his neck. He’s as sculpted as Eros, skin as unmoving as a Ken doll. His only flaw as far as I can see now are his roots that are growing in brownish, a mimicry of someone. Presumably Esme Blanchet.

            I go on and on. He blinks and shakes his head. There are soft purple veins behind his eyelids, much like a sickly infant. I wonder how long he’ll live. I suppose that’s up to me.

            “Esme Blanchet died in 1956,” Felix starts, his voice as plain and susceptible to cracking as any American twelve-year-old. “He was French.

            “Like a porcelain doll, he stared at every painter with the same green-eyed gaze, as masked and unblinking as though made of marble. He always looked so disappointed. An anemic, faunlike creature. The son of a sunglasses designer. Not that they were any good, those spectacles. He tried to be creative, or—well, I suppose a better word would be _innovative_. He tinkered with geometry. But rhombuses on the face just look silly. Still, the French liked it. For a short amount of time. I suppose it was a byproduct of the Piet Mondrian craze.

            “I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you don’t know what that means. You don’t seem too immersed in the world of fashion. I mean, you didn’t even recognize my ‘last name.’" This is completed with finger quotes. "Blanchet is an outdated and unfounded but still respected designer. But it wasn’t the artist who was so adored, it was Esme. He was like some cherub; he was a child idol, adored by most. Not that the French were as welcoming as the Italians were. At ten, the boy (already pursued by plenty of children and adults alike) decided to leave France, because school ‘did not suit him.’ His father, a progressive artist, had no choice but to follow the beauty’s word. After all, if he wasn’t going to, what kind of artist would he be? Corporations aren’t people; institutions are wicked. Esme wasn’t a smart boy. That’s where we differ.

            “His anger issues equate to yours. Hair-triggered, he’d burst into tears. Even when sobbing, his face would remain pallid and freckled. His cheeks did not flush red. The cords in his neck didn’t become stiff. It was an odd sight, how his face remained so doll-like and the noises he produced could frighten small animals. He had a tendency to destroy, too. A shoot through the glass slate of a coffee table, paintings pulled from the walls, fruit bowls tossed over balconies to the open mouth of the endless sea he gazed at every morning. It was the oddest thing. One moment a lover would be kissing up his legs, seemingly carved by Michelangelo himself, and the next he’d be digging his heel into the man’s teeth, shrieking at him, sobbing and pulling the sheets up in his little fists.

            “But who could blame him? It must be awful to be overtly sexualized as a child.

            “He wasn’t always awful. Often he was pleasant, if immature. Repetitive, he’d ask again and again: ‘why? Why? Why?’ He liked to draw, but all his art was very sub-par.

            “I think it was inevitable he wouldn’t live long. The beautiful never do. Whether it was some disease caught from the air, some oppressive, wicked disease, or if it was a vengeful lover poisoning his routine espresso. I doubt he actually enjoyed it. Espresso, I mean. I don’t think anyone would enjoy a slow death, rotting from the inside, becoming limp and pale and sore, deteriorating.

            “Either way, he didn’t die surrounded by family. He died in a sun room with a silk cream sheet thrown over his legs, shivering violently and sweating. Arched over him was a handsome older man, in his sixties, lamenting the loss of his lover, holding his tiny, sweaty hand in his grisled palm. Esme clutched it with the violent force of someone slipping off a cliff. Desperate to be pulled up. Knowing there isn’t enough strength to save him from demise. At fourteen, his veins almost purple in the blinding Italian sun, Esme said, _‘Quanno se fa ll'ammore sott' 'a luna comme te vene 'ncapa 'e di' ‘I love you’_?

            “Six-hundred people attended his funeral. Most he didn’t care about. Most he didn’t even know. It was closed-coffin. His father, grave from the death of his beloved son hung himself in a black-striped white suit, looking like the Joker with his fashionable red sunglasses slunk halfway down the slope of his well-crafted nose, his hair slicked back with oil, looking like some horrid gambler on Halloween.”

            And now Esme lifts his other foot and rolls the volume dial of the car radio. When his legs are open I take a glance at the flat slope of his stomach beneath his plain white t-shirt. He starts turning the radio station dial.

 _Savor this summer special salad while you can—_  
                        _Tickets are going NOW so—_  
                        _The Internet has responded to the tragedy with a hilarious output of—_

            It settles over the local college jazz station.

            “Of course, his mother, now gone mad by the loss of both her only son and her husband takes to the streets, and tries to slit her throat with a rusted artesian blade. French! So dramatic! A young man about twenty-seven wraps his arms around her waist and presses his crotch to the apex of her thighs, her periwinkle dress pushing up into her crotch. They dry hump like that while she sobs, and drops her knife in the road. And she clutches his shirt, and at forty the woman, a mess, falls in love with some twenty-something French stranger in the middle of the road, lit by a halo of a streetlamp, flotillas on the shore. Now, I call that recovery.

            “She goes on to detail her lovely son rather falsely. An artist, a genius, a scholar, a friendly young boy, a virgin. She writes a rather poorly-written biography titled _Anemia: A Mother’s Tale._ I suppose she wrote it all sitting on the lap of the French boy, for it was only sixty-seven pages long.

            “She dies of lung cancer in 1987. A year later, that old man that bent over the dying, young Esme, finally had his property released to a handsome, American curator who the old man had taken a shining to in his slight resemblance to Esme. A villa overlooking the blue Adriatic Sea, the young American searched the attic one lazy afternoon in which curiosity overtook him. A portrait reminiscent of the large-eyed, fashionable girls that Tamara de Lempicka became successful from was wrapped in crinkled, brown paper. Art Deco, the American almost fell in love with the young, freckled girl staring back at him from the canvas. Lips pink and hair wheat, nose pert and freckles splashed along the bridge of it, the American decided he’d never seen something so beautiful. Of course, this is not a girl, this is Esme Blanchet reclining (seems it’s all he did) by the private beach parallel to villa the American has inherited.

            “He buys _Anemia: A Mother’s Tale_. He buys all artwork he can find of the young boy. He researches Esme over years and years. And in this time of studious leisure, he stops paying bills. He loses the house in, if I remember correctly, 1997. He loses almost everything but Collection Esme. He moves back home with his parents and thanks to the newfangled Internet, takes a liking to Googling Esme. And now, the next step: reproduce the boy.

            “White Christian America is not exactly France, but how many blondes do you really find in France, anyway? He starts dating a few Swedes, but they find his weird desire to create a child crude. He is not looking for personality, he’s looking for faces. Which is where my mother comes in. Now, she’s raised to believe that pregnancy is a wonderful thing, and she's nearing twenty-five, _far_ too old to go without a baby. She doesn’t care how stark raving mad my father is in producing the ‘Perfect Child.’ Six weeks after trying, her tests turn out positive. They don’t name me Esme. They name me Felix. As nice as a legacy is, they want their own stunner. Disgusted by the thought of being nouveau-riche, they want to make a name for themselves in their own idol, not simply a replication. They do not want me to be an off-brand Barbie. They want me to be my own doll brand that will somehow blow Barbie out of the water. Felix! Uncommon, a collection of letters rarely found, hard to replicate without suspicion of copyright. If you ask my parents, any other child named Felix is direct theft. They’ll laugh, and say, ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ The poor fools.

            “I’m probably ten when I realize I am a reproduction. I am living in the shadow of a dead boy who’s done nothing. Now, how awful is that? I don’t want to be Bratz, though. I want to be Barbie. I want to make my parents _proud_ ." Sardonically, his lip curling. "I take on the shabby French accent. I curl my hair. I bleach the dark roots even though the glorified portrait of that stupid boy is exactly that—glorified—and devastatingly _normal_. Boring. His hair is not that shimmery white in person. In my head, it makes sense, you know. I maintain the obnoxious, spoiled, rotten personality. I maintain the narcissism. I maintain the shit accent. I maintain the shit grades. I made out with you on their couch. My father will never be an artist the way Blanchet was. My mother is not some tragic, dramatic lover. She’s a breeding farm. In a way, I’ve adopted role-reversal from the Blanchets. I’m the only one with introspective vision, while my parents focus on status. And look how well that turned out. My father lost the villa and we’re living in the Dallas, Texas Sorel apartment complex with a mad hipster. And, being the deluded fucks they are, my parents will always stay adamant in that I am better than a test tube baby. I was raised to think that way. And then I’m told when I turn twelve by my math teacher that I am nothing special after throwing a fit on how pointless school is. I use Esme’s very words, translated from French: ‘Oh, I’ll die! I’ll die if you keep me in this cubicle, away from Poseidon and Cupid! Your theories are timeless! I’ll learn them when being fucked by the sea!

            “What a shattering realization. I go home and demand from my parents why people do not respect me, idolize me the way Esme Blanchet does. They say: ‘but they do!’ As if I’m sacrilegious. No, no they don’t. I am not a fraction as charming. I’m artificial. I don’t know who I’m trying to please being this way. No one believes in it. But _you_ do.”

            He pokes me in the neck with his foot. And he smiles. “But now… If you take me, well, I’m a high-value target.”

            And in the midst of his little spiel in which his throat-clearing became more and more frequent, in which his word choice has jarred me in its complexity and maturity, in which I stared at him in silence, absorbing this tale with a vividness in my head a director might adapt from a truly wonderful tale, in which jazz has hummed sensually, soundtracking his dreamy tale uninterrupted, in which his parents appear in the rear-view as two silhouettes behind the glowing yellow lobby, I realize I have a boner.

            He looks down at it and pulls his foot to his chest, disgust curling his upper lip.

            “Go straight to hell,” he sneers, eyes squinted. “Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

            It takes me a while, but my conclusion culminates: “You’re a psycho. You’re absolutely _insane_.”

            He shrugs a little and pulls the back of his hand to his mouth. The apples of his cheeks bloom pinkish. He sucks the skin of his thin hand into his mouth, chewing a hickey into it. Dressed in a white shirt, barefoot, with brown corduroy pants on. Green eyed, blonde. 5’7”. Thirteen. That is how they’ll describe the missing child. Felix, American surname. No accent. Freckles.  
  
            The missing child poster. I think about a group of young police sitting parallel to his weeping parents, dimly lit by a flickering yellow bulb. This is the last thought that goes through my head before Felix points the shotgun barrel to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I turned eighteen, had a friend over for a week, and then had to babysit a brat for a week. Without pay. I am also gearing up for college. End my short young life before I attend. I can't even stand the prospect.
> 
> So there are my excuses as to why this chapter took so long and why it's so shoddy. I love all the dear readers I have. Thank you so much for your continued support and reviews. You're the best.


	10. Nine

How old were you when you first let a man make love to you?  
Next who was he?  
Next, how did you feel at the time?  
Next, how did you feel afterwards?  
What did you feel, what did you think?

— _The Cabinet of Caligari_ , 1962

* * *

 

           One of my earliest memories is waking up in my childhood bedroom, pantless, legs smeared with blood. The sun was creeping over our backyard oak tree, where a tire swing hung affixed. The light cast the leaves in a shimmering tangerine glow, the branches unmoving from the stagnant August weather, hot and wickedly blue.

             The sun came in and I sat down on the carpet in my worn Scooby Doo briefs and touched my scabbed knee. The day before, I’d fallen on the beach in Galveston. The water was brown and I’d landed on a cracked crab shell in the dirty sand. I’d split my skin and sobbed myself to sleep on a towel as my mother told me to be quiet, stop whining, wiping away the blood with the corner of the beach towel. It must have been six in the morning, because no one was awake in the dark house, no one but me and the sun. Hurt and itchy and groggy, I stared at the light, nails dragging up my calves, raking lines in the dried blood until my nails were lined with crescents of maroon, like red mud.

            It feels like that again. I blink my eyes open under unfamiliar sheets and the sun’s in the corner of my vision, a really nice slant of light seeping in, dust motes playing in it. The window is expansive, drawn closed by thin white curtains, reminding me of laundry hung on a line. The only sheen of light that makes its way through it where those curtains should be pulled entirely closed. I roll over and cover my eyes with my arms for a minute, and then remember that I always did like the morning sun.

            It glistens over the bedsheets, which are also white, tucked in at the end and smoothed out. I sit up and my head throbs violently, needling behind my eye and pounding on the inside of my skull, forcing me back down. Squinting at the sterile ceiling, two bars of light parallel to each other, my vision swimming with thick noise, I deem that I must be in a hospital.

            That little brat shot me in the head and I’m barely alive.

            Explains all the excessive, clinical white. I was once told in half a semester of medical science that hospital sheets were white because they were easier to bleach when the patient shat, vomited, bled, what have you.

            Except when I turn my head I see fake-Esme tied in a chair, bound with caution tape. **POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS**. I blink a few times and feel almost sad, deep in my black heart of hearts. Except by telling you how I feel I am not _actually_ feeling it, right?

            “Good morning and good day!”

            Sylvester Disney slinks over to me with a grin as bleached as his lab coat. His cheeks are dimpled, framing that huge mouth. I look from him to Felix, who’s sucking in the tape and then blowing it back out, bubbling the yellow plastic. As though he’s bored. Then back to Sylvester. It seems he’s no longer practicing _ohaguro_ , the practice of dyeing your teeth black. I rub an eye and then extend an arm. He always was an affectionate one.

            “Good morning, good morning, good morning!” he repeats as he dives into my open arm, squeezing my torso. My head gives a protesting throb and I wince a little, my eyes sealed shut tight. I pat him on the back, and inhale the scent of chlorine and spearmint. When he pulls back I’m almost expecting him to kiss me, but he refrains, eyeing my lack of eyebrows and bringing a hand to cup his mouth as he laughs quietly.

            “Is it morning?” I ask, blinking rapidly.

            “About ten.”

            “I feel I’ve slept for days.”

            “No,” he starts counting on his fingers, slowly. “Seven hours. Another and you’d be healthy!”

            Whatever the fuck that means.

            “My head—”

            “Oh, yeah, it looks awful.”

            Sylvester has an insatiable paternal tendency to take care of everyone he loves—and he hates everyone. We met at a Nine Inch Nails concert, when I was twenty and he was eighteen. The chubby-faced bastard dressed like a doctor, with his perfectly gelled hair pressed behind his ears. A blonde Playboy dunked in his father’s money, he stood in a sea of black-haired, black-clothed nihilists. I loved him immediately, and not in the way I love Esme. I watched him excitedly bob along to atheistic, violent lyrics and self-deprecating beats; dark, wicked sounds, looking like some yacht baby wandered into the wrong venue.

            I approached him after the concert, me with my shoulder-length hair and my pallid skin, my doom-and-gloom long face. He immediately assumed I’d be judgmental, so he rolled his shoulders back and said to me, “Don’t be mean, I’m only a boy.”

            “I won’t.”

            He wasn’t chubby, but he wasn’t thin, and when we went to Katz’s at three in the morning, I watched him pack away a tall salami sandwich and two cheesecake milkshakes while I nursed a beer and a basket of fried pickles, and he was talking excitedly of the simple things in life that made him happy: Nine Inch Nails concert tickets, Yves Saint Laurent boots, his indoor swimming pool. He wasn’t bragging. He _wasn’t_ , he was mentioning them in passing and not in the sly, cheeky way of winking at his wealth. No, he was brash enough to mention it in its entirety, but not in the pompous, glitzy way—he didn’t brag. He simply mentioned.

            Sylvester Disney, the great-grand-nephew of Walt. Something like that. It seems wealth has just been handed out to some select Americans, Brian and Sylvester—what more can they do? They must be awfully bored.

            We became friends because after Sylvester and I ate we had rough, unprotected sex in the bathroom, where he meowed in between thrusts—I mean it, like, meow, _kitty_ —and then kissed me on the mouth before I came, which for some reason, made me cum. He rested his hand on top of the toilet paper dispenser and wrapped a leg around me, his stomach bloated with food and my cock, and whimpered before cumming on my shirt. Everything Sylvester made seemed to be white.

            Sylvester likes to spill lye over dead bats in his bathtub and Sylvester likes to take his 1986 Testarossa Ferrari on night drives at 175 miles per hour. Sylvester lives alone in a geometric, modernized house erected a few miles away from Arlington, in a remote city named Greyville. He liked Texas as a kid because of all the cowboys, and now he likes it because he can escape his family’s everpresent eyes and their insistence that he _please_ stop ruining his life with excessive inheritance spending. Why does he need a helicopter? Why does he need a piano that David Bowie once used? Why? Why?

            “Because,” Sylvester once explained, “Because money is made to be spent.”

            I can’t wait for his reality show.

            I suppose I figured Sylvester was the best option to abscond to after Felix broke the skin of my temple with the barrel of the rifle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know this chapter's shorter than my narrator's dick, but I've started college and I really wanted to get SOMETHING out to y'all, so here it is. By the way, there's a ton of hicks here... I hope y'all will enjoy an upcoming character. Thanks so much for the support, as always. I'll try to write more if I have the time, because I love this story and it's just getting started.


	11. Kewpie, Texas

 When it's all said and done  
And there's nothin' left for you  
Don't you scream, "it's a bitch!"

—"It's a Bitch"  
Dirty Looks

* * *

 

           You can tell Esme and Sylvester don’t like each other. Sylvester because he has a weird possessive thing with me, even though I can’t peg why, I’ve never been that good to him. I’m more of a mooch than anything but I spend enough time with him for him to think we’re good buddies. Maybe he just likes my cock. He keeps glancing at Esme with daggers in his eyes, daggers to carve out Esme’s slim little neck.

            Esme probably doesn’t like Sylvester because he tied him up with caution tape and is holding him hostage in his secluded house with his kidnapper, but who knows. I stare at Esme from my bed, seeing him beautiful and worn and pale, forehead shiny with clammy sweat that shimmers in the summertime morning light.  There are bags under his eyes now, dark purple things of sleep deprivation, and his skin is drained save for two high spots of pink on his cheeks. He kept crying last night, after he hit me with the rifle when he realized it wasn’t loaded.

            Right. I remember.

            It went something like:

            _Click_ —

            Esme ducked his head down to look at the rifle he was holding so gallantly, his eyes welling with tears at the realization my head wasn’t pink paste matting the car window. When he looked back up at me my jaw was grit with pure, unadulterated fury. I grabbed him by the shirt, his white shirt, and leaned over the divider to snarl in his face.

            “I am your savior,” I said. “I am going to die for you.”

            “Sure, pal, Lord giveth and Lord taketh away,” he replied, and then brought the gun back up, and I just thought he’d figured out how it worked, the way the skin of my head split with white, blistering pain. Think of a headache injected into your temple, a headache brought into unforgiving light of the cold, cold sun, a headache you can scream directly into, high-pitched and wailing. And then think of being stung after the icy blade of a knife is dragged over your temple. _This is what it’s like to be shot._

            No, kid just had one hell of a swing on him. Hit me in the bowling ball of my skull like it was a baseball. I wondered if he was in Little League as a kid. _Yeah_ , I thought, as the blood trickled down into my eye, scorching hot, making my eyelashes clump together and eyeball water just like his as he cried and tried to run, cried cried cried, _He must have looked good in uniform_.

            And I don’t know why he’s crying and not moving for a second, and then I look at this death grip I’ve fit around his neck, turning his little face red.

            Squeeze.

            Woman on the TV, an infomercial I think. Woman with big blonde hair. Squeezing.

            Squeeze.

            We both have fluids leaking down our faces.

            “You’re not a good friend,” Esme chokes out, not eloquent. I want to voice that I was expecting more from him after that long tale. Esme, I think bitterly—sure. “Esme,” not Felix.

            Woman on TV squeezing a lemon in black and white, a red _X_ slapped over it. Introducing, the juicer.

            Felix’s head is gonna pop like a fruit. Lemon juice squirting out into a cup, splattering the sides. Great for sauces, dressing, lemonade, seasonings. The hard fist of that middle aged woman, the cords in the back of her hand standing out straight.

            _SQUEEZE_.

            But it doesn’t. His eyelashes flutter, inky and as dark as the roots of his hair—beautifully choreographed, that batting of the eyes actresses do like confused moths. He stops crying, tears shiny and wet on his face and his body isn’t as tense anymore. I ease him back into the chair.

            And I put his seatbelt on.

            Adrenaline makes you stronger or something. Capable of lifting overturned cars off your lover, trapped beneath. Capable of putting that lover down like a sickly, adored cat when he tries to escape your 1999 Nissan.

            A splitting headache, blurred brake lights. Going forty down the highway and wincing the whole time. Arlington, then Sylvester’s place, I know it by heart.

            Collapsing on the bed with Felix in my arms.

            “Tie him,” I said, watching his pristine sheets suck up my blood. I tried blinking, and it was like clumped rheum caking my eyelashes, thick and crumbly, the kind I’d love to pick if only I had the strength. Holding little Felix, closest we’d ever gotten.

            Sylvester pulling him off and staring at me.

            And then I sleep. Sleep and remember Galveston.

*

            We eat breakfast and watch _Family Feud._ I hate _Family Feud._ It makes me feel useless. Interspersed with commercials advertising Viagra and insulin alternatives, I almost physically feel the skin of my thighs go cottage cheese, feel an old person heart sliding into the cavity of my chest. Besides, I don’t even find Steve Harvey that funny. It’s such inoffensive fluff pandered out by the boring, middle-class families I’ve always thought produce nothing useful in the end. And you might be saying, _but what’syourname, Steve Harvey didn’t do anything_ wrong _!_ To which I’d ask you to consult Miss Colombia.

            Sylvester laughs with kitten-bowl milk smears on his lips, while Steve Harvey stares dejectedly into the camera, eyes wide at some vaguely risqué answer a guest has provided—penis or some variation of it. I wonder what he’d think of me.

            I sound like an emo child, his first misanthropic romp through a thesaurus. But my head hurts. Besides, melding into the conventions of modern American amusement— _how do you_ not _like Steve Harvey?! You can’t_ not _like bacon!—_ always disgusted me. But what doesn’t?

            I know—I should be celebratory. I have the object of my desires tied up next to me, relaxed on the couch with his eyes half-mast, the whites of them pinkish with lack of sleep and dispelling tears, face slick and soaked with perspiration.

            If you pinched his cheek like a loving grandma you’d probably wring the poor kid out.

            “Sylvester.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Turn on the news.”

            “Fast Money is next…”

            I start picking violently at a pimple on my bald skull, dragging my fingers over the stiff, tiny shards of hair that barely protrude. It’s disgusting, the texture of my head. “Just do it.”

            He flicks to local news.

            A commercial for KY Jelly comes on, set in a purple overtone. _Bring your orgasm to new heights_. Then the news.

            _Munch munch munch_ says Sylvester, irritating, dribbling milk off his spoon. _Whimper whimper whimper_ says Felix, unmoving, wheezing wetly past the plastic.

            There is footage of puppies in a box on screen, a writhing mass of golden labs, all soft and dumb. It makes me snort, seeing how stupid they look. The newscasters coo about it, and mention that the footage is submitted by some lonely woman, a dog show attendee and breeder. We watch some shit for a while, commercials and weather and traffic. Nothing about the Sorel. Nothing about Dallas at all save for a gas station robbery. No one’s hurt, but the suspect is at large, with a mullet and a tattoo with the devil’s number on it.

            How edgy.

            (Look who’s talking.)

*

            When we’re at the library, Felix is sedated in the back of Sylvester’s clownish white Ferrari, windows as opaque as black river water. I don’t want to use the laptop at Sylvester’s—I don’t want to be traced back to his place. And he can’t play it off himself as curiosity. _Yeah, I was thinking of selling this old modern art masterpiece I call a home for somewhere a bit more… humble. Meaningless… A liminal space that arouses anxiety in your placement in the world_ …

            While I Google the Sorel, Sylvester sits beside me, his legs crossed, dressed in a white lab-coat for whatever fucking reason. As if we didn’t arouse enough attention with my bald head and his Ferrari.

            He’s reading _Through the Looking Glass_. There are popup cutouts of Alice tripping into the rabbit hole. He seems amused.

            It’s only three lines and one shoddily written article but it’s enough to make me swallow my heart back down when it leaps into my throat.

            The undeniable urge to run concealed my brain, wrapped around it until my heels shook. My veins pumped gasoline.

Jᴜɴᴇ 30ᴛʜ  
3:13 PM

Cᴀssɪᴅʏ Jᴇғғᴇʀsᴏɴ

            Mɪssɪɴɢ ʀᴇsɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴏғ ᴀɴ ᴀᴘᴀʀᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇx ɪɴ Dᴀʟʟᴀs, Tᴇxᴀs ʀᴀɪsᴇ ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴs ғᴏʀ Dᴀʟʟᴀs ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇ.

            Kɴᴏᴡɴ ᴍɪssɪɴɢ ɪs Fᴇʟɪx Lᴀɴᴄᴀsᴛᴇʀ, sᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴅᴇᴠᴀsᴛᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴘᴀʀᴇɴᴛs Bʀɪᴀɴ ᴀɴᴅ Wᴀɴᴅᴀ, ᴡʜᴏ ᴅᴇsᴄʀɪʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ sᴏɴ ᴀs ᴀ Cᴀᴜᴄᴀsɪᴀɴ, 5’7” 15-ʏᴇᴀʀ-ᴏʟᴅ, ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏɴᴅᴇ ʜᴀɪʀ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀᴇᴇɴ ᴇʏᴇs. A ᴍᴀɴ ᴄᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ʜɪᴍsᴇʟғ “Jᴀᴍᴇsᴏɴ Pᴏʟʟᴏᴄᴋ” ᴀʟʟᴇɢᴇᴅʟʏ ᴇɴᴛᴇʀᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴘᴀʀᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ ʟᴀsᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴏɴᴠɪɴᴄᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴғᴜsᴇᴅ ᴘᴀʀᴇɴᴛs ᴛᴏ ʟᴇᴛ ʜɪᴍ “ʙᴏʀʀᴏᴡ” ᴛʜᴇɪʀ sᴏɴ ғᴏʀ ᴀ ᴘᴏʀᴛʀᴀɪᴛ ᴀᴛ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ 11:00 PM. Tʜᴇʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴇᴛ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴇ ʜɪᴍ sɪɴᴄᴇ. Tʜᴇ ᴍᴀɴ ɪs ᴅᴇsᴄʀɪʙᴇᴅ ᴀs ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ 6’0” ᴛᴀʟʟ, ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʀᴏᴡɴ ᴇʏᴇs ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ sʜᴀᴠᴇᴅ ʜᴇᴀᴅ. Hᴇ ʜᴀs ɴᴏ ғᴀᴄɪᴀʟ ʜᴀɪʀ ᴏʀ ᴇʏᴇʙʀᴏᴡs. Hᴇ ᴡᴀs ʜᴏʟᴅɪɴɢ ᴀ sʜᴏᴛɢᴜɴ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ, ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇ sᴀɪᴅ.

            Aɴ Aᴍʙᴇʀ Aʟᴇʀᴛ ʜᴀs ʙᴇᴇɴ ɪssᴜᴇᴅ.

            Aʙᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴅᴇᴛᴇᴄᴛɪᴠᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ɪɴᴠᴇsᴛɪɢᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀsᴋ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ʜᴀs ᴀɴʏ ɪɴғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴀʟʟ (214) 671-4500. 

            I click around for further details. There are none. Besides the Amber Alert, my name isn’t mentioned. Oh, boy. Just wait ‘til they search the apartments. Just you fucking wait. I try to think hopeful, like, oh! What if they peg Thomas as the abductor? How convenient!

            But my hair’s in the bathtub, along with my dead cat.

            Sylvester turns a page and starts laughing as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum’s bulbous bellies shake at him. I click around, check my social media. My only notification is that a second cousin had a birthday and someone I knew in college liked a picture of Sid Vicious I posted three weeks ago.

            I check my email.

            One from Macy’s.

            One from Chase Bank informing me on my large withdrawal—was it a mistake?

            One from a plethora of other industry names.

            And one from Thomas.

_just try and catch me fucker_

            I swallow bile, and it goes down smooth as a shot of tequila.

*

            Felix no longer has the caution tape around his mouth but he doesn’t scream. We’re driving back, but I’m sitting in the back with him as Sylvester drives disturbingly slow along the small roads, antique stores and Christian trinkets passing, cafés no one’s heard of and pie bars. He’s a black sheep.

            Felix opens his chapped lips, as white as his face, dry and pallid. His voice is wrecked from sobbing and probably the chokehold. His head is on my lap. I hold him like a child might her do with her kewpie doll. He’s far more adorable.

            “Can we get a Happy Meal?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bought a doll from 1909, green tea soap, and a Dirty Looks album (Cool From the Wire, of course). I washed myself from head to left testicle with the soap in a scalding shower, sat down naked with the record on, set the doll beside me, and wrote this chapter. I just felt like telling you all that. 
> 
> I know, this one's a little slow, but there are essentials in here. Slow, slow development of Stockholm Syndrome and a wink at a new character coming soon.
> 
> Feedback is incredibly, incredibly appreciated, especially those few who give me THEIR analysis of the work. I love to see that. As always, thanks for following!


	12. Princess Peach

I'll be the biggest scar in your back  
Run down and jagged and naked and blind  
I'll be the biggest dick that you ever had.

—"Good Sister-Bad Sister"  
Hole

* * *

 

            Licking his fingers of ketchup, Felix looks me in the eye once again. The red is on his chin. The red is on his palms.

            There’s salt clinging to a cut in his lower lip. He must have bitten it when he was screaming through the caution tape. With the salt in his mouth he says, “Thank you,” like a prayer—submissive to a god.

*

            I have the human kewpie in my arms when I announce my leave. His shoulder blades show through his white shirt, thin angel wings. The front is stained with red. Aromatic of body odor and piss, he needs a wash, and I reckon I do too—we both haven’t changed clothes since the kidnapping. It’s about one now, the next day, and we’re drenched.

            Sylvester is not happy.

            “Oh, I see!” he yells, slamming the car door when we pull up to his home, clear boxes of rooms making up the entirety of it, an abstract silver sculpture two stories high sloped alongside the home, shaded by tall trees that suit a red wood forest more than Texas. It’s the production of Le Corbusier’s fever dream.

            “I see! I’m disposable when my use is moot and your needs fulfilled, like a dirty condom! Well, fine. You can go, leave after all my hospitality. Fine! You don’t care about me, then fine! I see, I’m replaceable! I don’t even matter, really. I should kill myself.”

            Christ.

            Felix blinks against my neck, and I know because I can feel the tickling swoop like moth wings. I clutch him harder. He’s leaning on me, exhausted, like a baby. I can feel his heart jackrabbitting in his chest, but his shoulders are rounded and his frame is as worn as limp as a battered scarecrow, frame loose in his clothes.

            “We really appreciate all you’ve done.”

            “I see! Here comes to false niceties! Oh, nothing is more painful than that. Nothing! I’d rather be hit by you than have you be polite to me!”

            He narrows his eyes at us, voice poison and icy, coming out of those plush baby lips. A disturbing juxtaposition. “How chummy you are, all wrapped up in your perfect world. It’s embarrassing, really, how keen you both are to third wheel me. Like I don’t matter. After all I’ve done! I see! You don’t want me involved anymore. Fine, then. I’ll let you live in your creamy world crafted of rainbows and sex and I’ll leave. Be on my own and rot, hang in the bathroom and no one will know until my smell seeps through the walls!”

            “It’s nothing personal, man, the cops—”

            “I don’t need to hear your excuses. I know how it is. You’ve lost interest in me and replaced me. It’s fine. You two be happy together.”

            Vaguely, you can hear Felix mumble, “You’re both maniacs.” But only if his lips are shaping the cloth over your heart. Only then.

            To stay becalmed would be imminent death. Game over. Sail on, then.

            “Sylvester, we’ve got to run. Cops are after me; you saw the webpage.”

            “I did not.”

            “You—wait.” He doesn’t want to be an accomplice.

            “I did not see you or your cousin except on a short visit this morning. We watched Family Feud, had cereal, and went to the library.”

            “Burn the sheets.”

            His eyes shine wetly, pond water and glittering eyelashes. “Oh, you still care.”

*

            This is the first time anything has happened to me in my life. Before this my nothingness was a laundry sheet line leading from birth ‘til death, pinned by minor accomplishments. Steve Harvey rings in my head: ‘What’s the proudest moment of a parent’s life?’ Answered by, ‘graduation, birth of his children.’ Those are the clothespins. Pride swells in a child fulfilling expectations. And then what comes of that child? You birth your own child—transfer your opus of desolation onto another. Now, that’s not too bad a solution if you’re selfish and take the easy route of perpetual comfort. The loveseat of a life.

            Personally, never having kids left me empty, but I was fine in this emptiness, sitting alone like a fetus in the dark cavern of a womb.

            I have a kid now.

            And now something has happened. To such an extremity that I’ve almost gone numb in the intensity of possibilities. I have finally broken the mold; I am doing what I want. It’s terrifying. But I don’t mind it. There’s nothing else for me to do but enjoy myself until I can't.

            I’m glad I’ve gathered the balls to take this on.

            There are the things I think on some feeder branching off of I-45, enveloped in a hick town whose name eludes me, population sixty, and probably all related. I’m not driving. I’ve pulled over to stand beneath the cooling shadow of arching willow trees that cup the road the powerlines. A red blemish of a fire hydrant stands alert to my right, a coil of snakeskin on the dirt crunches under my shoe.

            I feel alive, like I’ve just been slapped in the mouth or had a gun pointed to my head. This is what it’s like to not be a carcass. Nerves alighted, sensations in overdrive. I never want to be comfortable again.

            Standing in the frame of the passenger’s seat, door opened, arms bracketing it in case Felix tries to make a quick run, I survey the road. Along the long slant of green pasture, a road lies grey and desolate. There is no rattling to be heard, no whir of tires.

            I bend down to look at Felix.

            “So, what do we do now?”

            There’s something oddly perpetual about the prospect of virginity. Despite what the progressive thinkers of the time say on how it’s a social construct, crafted through religion, purity is something of an emanation. I think it has something to do with the tightness of the human body. Maybe that’s why I’m the way I am—you know, a pedophile. Skin is infinite and ever changing but no one wants it worn and loose.

            I’ve never had a virgin.

            The thought of such a private invasion upsets me. There’s an inherent need in me, like many Americans, to maintain mint condition, even if it proves useless. Record jackets and baseball cards, vintage dolls. Unused and beautiful, perpetually adored and fresh. For looks. A mannequin.

            It’s something you show off.

            Kill me before I brag about my abducted twelve-year-old to _anyone_. I blink a few times, swallowing a jump of my heart into my throat, as I remember the police report that made a little piss trickle the curve of my thigh. “You’re fifteen, huh?”

            He blinks blearily, exhaustion present in the bruised loops under his eyes. He makes no effort to move, slumped and tied—now with duct tape—and leaned against the backseat. Ketchup stained on his shirt and face pallid, he remains beautiful as ever, a profile indescribable. He’s simply caked in love now, like a baby doll’s clothes worn by the child playing with her toy, outside, inside, by food.

            To desecrate him further would only be an extension of that.

            I rub the bulge in my pants.

            “Fifteen,” I repeat, and peel the duct tape from his mouth. His lips are blistered from chewing, mouth a light pink as though he’s just been waxed.

            He licks a blister as red as a Mars crater. “If you believed I was twelve at any point, I’d assume your IQ is the same.”

            My palm tingles with the urge to connect skin with skin. But I look at his hand—his soft, childish hand, unblemished, clutching the soft cloth of his shirt. I think of his unbridled innocence and youth, his perfection. Pageant queen baby skin kissed pink, little fingers curled in the way of infancy. I stick my finger in his palm to see if he’ll hold it as a newborn might his mother. His skin is clammy. He doesn’t curl it around my finger.

            “You are still beautiful.”

            “Flattered.”

            “Quite the snark,” I whisper, “For someone kidnapped.”

            “Call me resilient.”

            “You’re the worst victim ever.”

            “I think I’m doing pretty good. As for you, you’ve shown your face around my parents, brought a shotgun, left at a definitive time they can identify, are a now-missing occupant, have brought me to the home of a man-child who can’t hold his tongue to save his life, oh, yes, let me recap more.”

            “What are you, an investigative journalist?” Sweat beads on my forehead.

            “You altered your appearance, good job. Except now they’re looking for what you _currently_ look like.”

            “You didn’t even see the report.”

            “There’s a report? Even better! I was just using basic intuition.”

            “You’re a smart-ass,” I say. I rest my forehead on the hot exterior of the car.

            “Perhaps I’m hopeful.”

            I bite my tongue to keep a rant against hopefulness at bay. I don’t want to break him completely, after all. Bringing my thumb to my tongue, I lick it with what spit I have in my dry mouth. Sandpapery as a cat’s.

            Against his shirt, I attempt to clean the red stains. He watches my futile, maternal attempt peacefully—not like he can protest much, anyway. Not with his arms locked hard behind him.

            “Are you going to fuck me now?”

            “Yes, I think so.”

            He looks past me, his green eyes worn and defiant, narrowed a bit, pink as blood in spit. “Is that what this all leads up to, then?”

            I don’t say anything, just pet his loose, sweaty curls, scratching my stained nails over his scalp lightly. He doesn’t pull his head back. He just keeps staring past me, looking somewhere, in the thicket of stagnant green trees.

            “Unnecessary, if you ask me. I wouldn’t have rejected your sexual advances at the apartments either.”

            “Don’t be so self-centered, child,” I say, “This is about more than just you.”

            “Oh, how nice!” he says—and a burst of excitement runs through me, spiders in my ribcage. This vitriol is characteristic of the jealous Esme. “How nice, then. I’m a trophy wife. Assisting you. A fleshlight, is that it?”

            “Basically.”

            His lips thin out as he bites them hard, finally opening that crater. A dollop of blood lingers on him, red as the ketchup, as wine.

            And he still doesn’t look.

            I turn around to see what he’s staring at. Nothing but a tiny sparrow perched on a black telephone line, as still and fat as taxidermy, watches.

            When I look back at him I’m stricken by his expression—a chasteness of all-consuming purity. Gentle dreams and baby shampoo, wide eyes and invisible halos. Despite the wreck of his face in all its discoloration and shine, he seems as soft and white as those lifelines, those laundry sheets on a line, beautiful and fleeting as a slant of golden light through oak trees.

            “If you touch me,” Esme says, “I won’t know what to do. I’ll be corrupted.”

            My cock gives a throb as painful as a tension headache.

            “Why is purity more arousing than corruption?” I muse, hand on the cloth of his worn, stiff jeans, over his thigh.

            He narrows his eyes, but his face remains as angelic as a cherub. “Because dogs like marking their territory. It’s an act of possession.”

            I remove my hand and unzip my jeans.

            “Well, I can’t argue with that.”

            “You’re going to rape me because your cat got killed?”

            “Yes,” I shrug, and as my black heart has an immunity to words, paradoxically it takes a softening to expression. Though I’ve been enfeebled by Thomas’s Italian exploitation movies, the soft cloth of an old woman’s shirt (usually bedazzled, ill-fitting, well-loved), and wedding dresses, I like to maintain that I’m a tough motherfucker, no empathy in my person, and cruel. But there’s another category inching its way into the tough cardiac muscle and letting it throb painfully, preventing me. This face. Esme’s exhaustion, his whimpering, the pout of his bottom lip, the toddlerish curl of his fingers. He’s not fifteen anymore. He tilts his head and the limp curls brush his high cheekbone, the fan of his eyelashes kiss the bottoms. I can’t. I am a quadriplegic.

            He makes a wounded, cauterized noise. I inhale the hot summer air thick as coffee steam and exhale it, moving into the backseat with him as he inches away best he can with ankles and wrists tied. I slam the door shut. The high blast of the air conditioner makes me shiver as the sweat dotting my skin goes cold.

            “You’re completely void of selflessness.”

            “Fuck,” I say, throwing an arm over my eyes, “I hate when you talk intelligently.”

            “Oh, I know. My attraction lies in my childishness. When I’m Esme, you know, people find me just adorable in my stupidity, in my eagerness to learn. It makes the untouched youth thing so sexy. Forget all the _normal_ men who say ‘smart chicks are sexy.’ You think anyone really wants that? People are always going to be threatened by what they don’t have in mind. No one likes to be controlled, undermined. Unless you’re in the miniscule category of having a secret humiliation kink.”

            “You’re not that smart,” I say, contradictory.

            “There’s the defense. Look how your dick’s deflated. You crave power.”

            “No shit, Sherlock.”

            “Fuck you, Watson.”

            I suck in my cheeks and side-eye him, eyebrow cocked. I want to smack the little bitch, not rape him. The shithead is more emotionally manipulative than me.

            “Don’t you like me?” This time, my voice has taken on the pathetic, endearing noise of those men I've always hated, those nice guys. Desperate and wormy. I suppose I've sunk to their level by now. 

            His eyebrows raise and I push his bangs back to see the extent of his disbelief. It almost hurts.

            “Well, didn’t you ever like me?”

            “Maybe I might have if you didn’t kidnap me.”

            “But we kissed…”

            “Oh, boy! We _kissed_! What teenager doesn’t crave affection, attention? I know you like to see yourself as the most heartless motherfucker in the world, but we are the cruelest human beings alive. We’re also the neediest. We’ll take what we can get, but we aren’t going to dish it out in equal measure. We don’t feel for the giver; we feel for the gift.”

            “It’s not always like that,” I say, biting my bottom lip and worrying it.

            “No, not always. Just with me.”

            I don’t say anything for a second, just watch him. “And you don’t want sex.”

            This makes him go silent. And then he laughs, and laughs, a bitter, caustic noise, that turns into hysterics. He throws his head back and I watch his shoulders shake, I watch the baby bones of his chest expand and contract, I watch the hollow of his neck glitter invitingly as his neck catches and releases the burning light of the hot sun. The drip of the blood on his lip crawls down his chin. “Sure I do!” he exclaims, grin disturbingly wide, snarled and gummy like a dog. He abruptly turns to me, so fast it might give him whiplash. I can’t help grinning too, leaning back. “Good God, I just can’t wait to brag to my friends about losing my virginity! I can’t wait to absorb their attention. Oh, who cares how uncomfortable I am? I’ve got the reputation.”

            “But there’s one problem,” I play along.

            “That’s right! One problem!”

            “You have no friends to share it with when you’re a kidnapping victim!”

            “ _One problem!_ ”

            He’s in hysterics and I can’t help laughing too, and I pretend this is camaraderie and not delirium. I pretend we’re sharing a joke. I pretend he’s okay with it. I pretend he’s okay with sharing everything from now on.

            I love Esme so much.

            I’m terrified of Felix.

            In tears, yet giggling, he says, “Are you going to fuck me?”

            I rest my cheek on my fist and shrug. “I’m not hard anymore.”

            “Then what’s the point?”

            “Going on a manhunt is lonely without a partner in crime. Do you know who Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather are?”

            He shakes his head.

            “They were spree killers, a couple. He was eighteen, she was fourteen. They drove around and killed people. Imagine how dull it must be to share the anxiety with no one but yourself.”

            “I imagine you’d commit suicide.”

            “Yeah, me too.”

            “So, what? I’m Caril Ann?”

            “Yes.”

            “You think Start-weather didn’t have sex with her between murderous escapades?” Sarcasm always prevalent in this boy. It's irritating, how stubborn he is.

            “Well, we haven’t killed anyone yet, have we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is my favorite chapter so far. Felix isn't a damsel, Esme is.
> 
> As of now, you've read fifty-two pages of a novel. Got a lot to go. Stick with me, y'all. Love you as always.
> 
> For my second work, I'm musing over college serial killer (inspired largely by my hatred for this university and the thick woodlands surrounding the campus) and rotten femininity in the form of twin girls. If anyone wants to talk to me about writing, you can ask for my Skype privately. I'd love to discuss this work and others.


	13. Pleased to Use You

Hey Joe, I said where you goin' with that gun in your hand?  
I'm goin' down to shoot my old lady.

—"Hey Joe"  
Jimi Hendrix

* * *

  
           The devil takes note of no planar barriers. He ignores government-issued borders and he doesn’t care for property. He steps on his bounds of nature, relentless to the claimed. So I stop looking at street signs, just to prove this fact to the little boy in my back seat who sees himself as demonic. _No,_ I’m _more evil._ Petty, maybe. But what do I have to lose?

            “Where are we going?” he speaks up, forehead resting against the glass as he watches trees flicker by, all this unending desolation in the form of thickets. When the rare truck rears up he yells weakly and kicks the glass, half-begging for attention. As if he’s expected to, as if he’s trying to put in _some_ tired effort to get a passing grade mark in drama class. So far, I haven’t quelled these outbursts, and so far, the only result it has elicited is a headache. He keeps trying to unlock the car with his chin, his elbow. I lock it right back with an easy push of my finger.

            “Jesus, why isn’t anyone helping?”

            “Didn’t you see the bullying films from middle school?” I ask, “Bystanders are just as bad! They watch and don’t act—and a striking one in fifty people aren’t bystanders! You’re surrounded by devils! But mostly me.”

            “ _Delusions of grandeur_ ,” he mumbles, quirking an eyebrow. Another truck rears by and he shrieks this time, almost violently, pressing his face to the window, and even that doesn’t make him unattractive. I watch nervously, fingers flexing on the steering wheel, and the truck—this time advertising frozen peas, arranged in the form of a smiley face—accelerates. Leaving behind a cruel vegetable simper. He writhes uncomfortably and kicks the back of my seat in frustration with his two bound feet.

            “Come on, man,” I say, watching fat tears roll over his pinched-peach cheeks, “You said you wanted to be kidnapped. You said you wanted to escape monotony and the dull cycle of your parents. You don’t _have_ to be Esme anymore.”

            A clear line of snot is suspended, meeting at his septum, dangling there and swinging like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. He rests, finally, and closes his worn, puffy eyes. His head must be throbbing with the excessive tears. Now that he’s quiet, I feel a slew of relief at this silence.

            The radio chirps prophetically, the last stretch of good music before it fizzes out to country in its homogenous entirety:

            _Where do bad folks go when they die?_  
            They don’t go to heaven where the angels fly.  
            They go to a lake of fire and fry.  
            See ‘em again ‘til the fourth of July.

            Right, Meat Puppets. The grim reminder makes me wince, but I beat time against the steering wheel with the palm of my hand.

            Weakly, Felix speaks up, eyes trained on the car roof. The snot is now smeared flat in a line parting his face, like a silver snail track. “This is not the type of self-journey discovery I pictured.”

            “Oh?” I bitterly say, “What did you picture? Funded on ten thousand dollars of your parents’ cash, sent to some tropical island where you’ll ‘find yourself’ in cocktails and night clubs? Cancun, maybe? Under the hands of Mexican masseurs, you’ll realize that you’re more fitted to romanticism’s side of life, is that it? _Appreciate the small things_ , you’ll think, staring at seashells in the ocean. But you only appreciate it ‘cause you’re eighteen and drunk and going to get laid tonight after some easy muscled dude licks your neck in a bar. Not because the seashells are that pretty.”

            “I’m straight, actually.”

            “Even worse!”

            “Besides, I’d go to Europe, not Mexico.”

            “Right, right, France, then. Tiny slices of brie and wine and ancient art you’ll pretend to be impressed by. The villa your dad bought you from. You’ll sit there and gaze out at the ocean and be like, ‘well, I have a flight to catch at three.’ You’ll maybe cry at the thought of someone else’s life, some ancient someone who grew up in an age of art and discovery and longing and not Internet sensations. But he’s just like you, and he worried about school and presenting his meager grades to his parents, what’s for lunch, just like you. What I’m offering is more eye-opening than a ticket to some famous city ever could.”

            “I can’t argue with that,” he says, “My eyes are open. I am free. I am enlightened, just like you.”

            “ _God_! Do you _ever_ tone down the sarcasm?! You’re such a little smart ass!”

            “You have the biggest ego in the world. You think you’re achieving some otherworldly purpose with this?”

            “Yes.”

            Blunt, brutal. I grin at him in the rearview.

            “That hole in your face is stupid,” he says, kicking the back of my seat, a child again. I tongue the gap I’ve made with pliers and willpower. “I hate it. Why’d you even do that?”

            “For effect.”

            “To impress who?”

            “You know exactly who,” I say.

            “I really am your entire world then,” he observes, “How pathetic.”

*

            Bunny Morris does not seem the type to read local news. Her favorite media consists of _Maury_ , _Jerry Springer_ , _and Steve Wilkos._ That specific brand of trashy talk shows. If I was straight it would’ve been her a long time ago, with her ass-length honey hair untamed, always barefoot, suntanned and calloused.

            This detour serves one purpose: getting me closer to Thomas.

            Bunny works for her mother, Lise, in her antique shop. It’s called _Classic Downtown_ and I don’t remember how I got to it. It’s rather famous, one of the few tourist attractions on the empty stretch of road from Dallas to whereverthefuck. That’s because there’s a ten-foot-tall sculpture of a chipmunk or squirrel or some other rodent out front, two chestnuts placed in front to represent _cajoles_.

            Bunny’s shoeless feet are crossed on the counter, her big toe, painted red, sticking out of her dirty sock like a pimple. She doesn’t look up from the ancient, buzzing television. _“You are… not the father!”_ The static roar of the audience echoes through the store. I can hear few footsteps, one pair sneaking through racks of abandoned bowling shirts, stiff bell-bottoms.

            As Bunny sucks on a thin cigarette and shakes her head as some forsaken mother runs off stage, I take a moment to sneak a baseball cap that says PROUD TEXAS GRANDPA and place it upon my bald scalp. She claps her hands together, nails as polished as candy cherries.

            I approach the woman, a sliver of smoke creeping out of her mouth.

            “Howdy,” she mumbles, then looks from the television. This is one of those towns in Texas where the famous accent actually exists. Sure, it comes out of the suburban mothers in rare Dallas coffee shops once in a while, but that’s polished and fake. Here people actually duck hunt and chew dip, still eat pig feet and shit like that. It’s contagious.

            “Hi there, beautiful,” I say, leaning over the counter. False casualness to obscure the fact that there is a kidnapped boy-child in the backseat of my car, parked in front of chipmunk testicles. I threatened him that he has nowhere to go, that escape is useless, that no one’s going to save him, and that he better stick with me until we get to the next metropolis.

            But you know that little fucker.

            She eyes me for a second, unrecognizing, lip curled to showcase yellowed teeth. One of the only flaws I can detect. Besides her smell. Pungent of body odor and cigarettes. “Huh?”

            “Your sister here?”

            Bondurant Morris has now changed her name to Bonnie Morris, something that infuriated Bunny when she first made her transition. Bunny had gone on a rampage over the name, not the unconventional new tits and long hair foreign to Shit Town, Texas. _That’s too close! Too close!_ Of course, Bonnie wept, claiming her sister’s transphobic nature was wicked, that she didn’t support her. When really Bunny was worried about identity theft from her former-brother. _Couldn’t you have chosen Brianna? Barbara? Brooke? Becky?_

            Thomas, who had been witness to this fiasco on one of the rare occasions we hung out, instantly loved Bonnie. They’d been friends since. I’m sure Bonnie slid into Thomas’s weak asshole regularly. Bunny and I have very little history together—I barely know the bitch. All I know is she’s trashy and my only female experience. After getting ribs and before an episode of _Jerry Springer_ , I fell to my knees and nosed at her cunt through the black slant of her panties. She smelled like piss and sweat, girlhood radiating off her as thick as humidity. I pulled off her panties and stared at the crevices of glittery, odiferous folds and touched my tongue to her cunt awkwardly. It felt slimy, like peeled peaches bathing in syrup. I couldn’t get her off and she pushed me away with her foot on my head. Now we’re _just friends_ , or rather, regular patron and seller.

            This is where I got most of my records.

            “You remember me?”

            She eyes me for a second, lips pinched, eyebrows hitched. Then she whistles lowly and swings her feet off the counter. “Shit!” she yells, a glob of yellow Juicy Fruit tucked in her gums, “The hell happened to your hair?”

            From somewhere in the back of the store, the scratch of an old woman barks out, “Don’t you be cussin’.”

            “I ain’t cussin’!” Bunny ashes her cigarette and then takes a long drag, tainting the gum with nicotine. “That’s my mama.”

            I wince at the maternal word—Thomas had an uncanny obsession with adopting it, using the term for every female in his life. Including Bonnie. I nod.

            “So where your hair gone to?”

            “I have cancer, underwent chemotherapy.”

            “Aw, shit, honey. She stabs her cigarette out in a music box decorated by ballerinas. “What kind?”

            “Melanoma.”

            “Aw, shit.” It’s her highest form of sympathy, I suppose. “Well, listen, honey. You find something you really want an’ I’m willin’ let you haggle—within reason.”

            “Your sister in or not?”

            “Aw, Bondurant’s at home, probably dyin’ his hair again.”

            “I really need to see her.”

            “Why?”

            I fish-mouth for an explanation. Fate plays a card, right when I decide on, “I’m in love with her.”

            A police officer enters the store. She’s thin-nosed and long-faced, with thick eyebrows and skin the color of mahogany, probably some middle eastern chick. She has an intensity about her face, this glaring, patronizing scowl that makes me feel guilty even though I didn’t do any—oh. I wonder if she was born with that look and as a result, became a police officer, or if the force instilled it into her. She’s short and muscular, the cupid’s bow of her lip scarred with a jagged, pale line.

            I swallow hard and look back at the cashier. All my psychological boundlessness is fucked, and I fear the law again. Who was it that said without law there would be no crime? Some smart dude, probably. Shit, why couldn’t I just be an author instead of pursuing my wildest dreams like the characters that authors write about?

            Bunny cocks an eyebrow and greets her with “Howdy, you need any help just ask,” casually. Probably because when she does meth or whatever it’s only hurting herself. She’s not putting a child in danger or anything.

            Then she looks back at me and smacks her gum a few times, places her hands upon her hips. “You’re in love with her?”

            “Yes,” I say, “She’s a total babe and I need to see her. My nights are spent dreaming of her.”

            “Christ on a cross.”

            “If not, I can leave—and pine.”

            “Huh?”

            “Long for her. Alone in my bed back home… Three states away. You know I came all the way here from Georgia?”

            “That’s _four_ states away.”

            Bitch knows her geography.

            “Au revoir.”

            “Hold up,” she says, and grabs a sticky note from a stack of office supplies and a hula girl bobble head. Sweat beads on my back and I look over my shoulder to watch the cop studying me intensely, fingering the strap of a purse I know she’s not interested in. My heart’s jack-rabbiting in my chest. I quickly duck my head before we maintain too long of eye contact and I invite her in. Bunny’s pink lips cup the pen cap, phallic, as she scrawls her address on the pale yellow paper. “Maybe she’ll move out with you or somethin’. Always knew you liked cock.”

            Offering a painful, crooked grin, I crumple the sticky note in my palm and shove it in my jeans pocket. Then I duck out of the store, out of the whirring, lazy fans and the mothball smell and the roar of Maury and the oppressive glare of the cop. I duck into the car and jerk it into reverse, and I follow the speed limit down the road, further and further away from the police car parked in front of a pair of testicles.

*

            “Did you call the fucking cops?!”

            Felix rests his forehead on the window, looking uninterested and dull. He doesn’t say anything for a while before answering, “No.” I can tell his snark was rising to the surface, oil slicking through the clear waters of his conscious. But I’m fucking angry, and he’s fucking frightened.

            The dye of my fingers still ink the swan’s curve of his throat.

            “There was a lady cop in the store! How the fuck did that bitch get here?”

            “In her car, I assume.”

            I slam on the brakes and pull onto the nearest dirt road branching off of Interstate-Fuck-Knows and travel down it, bracketed by canopied trees, thickets of darkness. Putting it into park with enough vitriol to jerk the car, I turn around in my seat. My fingers are trembling, conveying a sort of anger bile imitates, this burning rise that sears your insides.

            I’ve snapped.

            “Listen to me carefully, you little bitch. I’m giving you a new life and I’m letting you live off of my cash. We’re going to start a beautiful world together and we’re going to dish out revenge because there’s nothing to live for on the mortal plane. I’m only trying to help. You know you don’t want to go back, you fucking know it. Or you’ll end up sitting in a chair watching _Family Feud_ with your wants and desires unattended to because of societal norms. I don’t need your goddamn sarcasm. I don’t need you to bring any more attention to yourself—I am helping us both. The cop in there could stop all of this before it gets good.”

            For a long time, he stays silent, small hands tucked between his knobby knees, the worn cloth of his cords soft and heavy. When he speaks his voice is meek and thin as the cloth of his stained white shirt. “What if I don’t want excitement? What if I do want comfort?”

            “You’re too smart to do nothing.”

            “I didn’t call the cop. I didn’t. I sat in the backseat, watching this real squirrel clamber up the sculpture, and I wondered if your car was leaking. But it was my sweat, cold sweat on my head, since you turned off the air and the heat this year’s really bad. I didn’t see her car, which was parked to the passenger’s seat’s side. I like sitting behind you. I only noticed her car when you rushed out drained as a ghost.”

            “You promise?”

            “How would I even manage that? My hands hurt, very badly.”

            “I can’t untie you, you know,” I say, my anger simmering to a boil, still irked by his crude sarcasm. There’s something perturbing in stubborn know-it-alls; vaguely charming in their knowledge, but it fills you with poison in your own inferiority. I can’t stand it. It’s hard not to be the smartest one in the room.

            I know what you’re thinking: your life must be very hard, then. To which _I’d_ say, fuck you, man. Or ma’am.

            “Please.”

            The car keys jaggedly run through the duct tape and tear it free. His wrists are discolored when freed, white remnants of the shackles. Pale as dove feathers.

*

            Without a GPS or map, the address scrawled on the sticky note does very little for me, especially when the street names here are about as familiar as Chinese. I wonder if the search is worth it—it may elicit no clues as to where Thomas is.

            Esme makes fists and then outstretches his fingers, long and thin. He does this a few times, staring at his hands as though they’re fascinating. His pink flush is back to his wrists. I watch him in the rearview, framing the bottom half of his face and the outstretched fingers, his quirked lips and the thinness of his neck outstretched from his shirt. As orange midday light filters in through the trees, it illuminates his shirt, turning it lucid. The bones of his chest are xylophone prominent and when he opens his mouth to lick his teeth, a crooked one presents a gap, where the flesh of my neck could fit. Aromatic of sweat, boyish and pluming, I inhale his body odor—still childlike despite his newfound adolescence, not pungent or sour like the grown. Pure skin, warm and intoxicating like paint fumes. Light body hair curls beneath his underarms, shadowed thinly and in wisps. In that orange light he’s a god.

            I picture him crawling between the seats and stretching his legs, the brown cords rolled up, ankles bare. Feet on the dash, his thin arms crossed behind his mop of curly hair (sadly flattening more and more), gazing out the window with serenity and not with longing for freedom. Pulling over beneath an apple tree and letting me neck him, breathing in skin smells. His torrid presence—heartbeat and blood flow—drives me mad as I dream, a few feet away and untouchable. Only framed as country rolls behind us, going far, farther.

            When he finally drifts to sleep (bred from either pure exhaustion of hypnotized boredom), forehead marked pink from its resting place against window, I turn down the radio and listen to his breathing.

*

            The distinctive scent of waffle batter fills the _Chik’n Shack_. It’s a southern custom, chicken and waffles—here, the fried chicken is tossed in crumbled Cinnamon Toast Crunch and thrown atop a stack of diabetes-inducing waffles, packed thoroughly with chocolate chips. Maple syrup is optional. Bonnie spills half the bottle over her plate. Sickly sugary, the golden streams slide down the food slowly and enveloping, and the waffle absorbs its molasses. The same orange light glints in it, through the old wood-framed, misted windows. It turns the syrup glittery. Which makes me horny for some reason, even though the food’s scent makes my stomach turn in its decadence.

            Her jaw isn’t strong, but it’s wide. In contrast, Bunny’s heart shaped chin makes Bonnie’s look like a brick. I met her at the indicated address—a nice happenstance that one of the few labeled roads was Beetle Elm Ln, same word scrawled in Bunny’s cursive. But she spelled it “Beatle Elm Layne.” Bonnie wouldn’t let me in the trailer surrounded by curling vines and tall wheatgrass, refused to even speak to me until I offered to pay for her food. A big girl, she felt love directly emanating from comfort food, and this kind of small-town south was rich in delivering such. Only then did she pull velvet kitten heels onto her too-large feet, clenching the skin and turning it red around the rims.

            In the car I identified the smelling, sleeping cherub as my nephew. (“I didn’t know you had a sibling.” “Older brother’s son.” “Watchin’ him?” “Yeah, just for a week while his parents are on vacation.” “Oh, where?” “Georgia.” “That’s an odd place to go for va-cay.” “Let’s not wake him up.”)

            Now I’m perturbed by her friendliness. If she had come across Thomas, perhaps she’d be offensive with me—she certainly isn’t the type to hold back. Or perhaps she is, and this is a front so I can get her more waffles. She mixes the floating sugar crystals at the bottom of the sweet tea with her straw and polishes the chicken bone with her red-stained lips. Her flat chest is marred with syrup stains.

            “So, I see you’re a grampaw now.”

            I roll my eyes up and note the cap bill in my vision, and then remove the hat. “Nah, just thought it was funny. Got it from your place.”

            She reddens. “Yeah, Bunny told me you was there.”

            “Listen…”

            “I never _was_ that into you, man.”

            “I’m not here to confess my love.”

            The teasing lilt of her voice flattens and her eyebrows—plucked carefully—hitch in despair. I feel no remorse, watching her pout. “So why in the fuck’re you talkin’ to me, then? Huh? What do you want?”

            “Where’s Thomas?”

            “Tommy an’ I ain’t talkin’ to each other.”

            “Well, we have one thing in common. When was the last time you saw him?”

            “Bout’a month ago. We had sex.”

            I blanch. “I _didn’t_ need to know that.”

            Covering her eyes with both hands, she takes a stuttering inhale. It’s become far too familiar, what with the constant crying Felix has been dishing out. “After we did it, I was in bed with him an’ we was smokin’ some dope an’ I asked him if he wanted to be with me forever, an’ he was like, ‘ _Certainly_ not,’” her mocking accent of his English intonation is awful, but I cannot keep my smirk at bay. “I reached over an’ slapped him an’ I was like, ‘fuck you!’ An’ he was like, ‘never again.’ He left the place, short li’l fucker, an’ I was like cryin’ an’ cryin’.”

            I have mixed feelings: for one, it’s hilarious to think of Thomas being such a dick to Bonnie, and it’s also hilarious to picture him slapped. A sadistic giggle scratches at the back of my tongue, knocking on my teeth and peeking through my lips like, hey, let me out. But I tuck my lips beneath my teeth and nod, resting my chin on my hand. What I say to her is—for once—the truth. “I hate him, too. He killed my cat.”

            “He what?”

            “Yeah, he killed him.”

            She looks skyward, as though contemplating. Then she levels her face on the same plane as mine. “He used to do that. He’d step on frogs and field mice when we was walkin’ at night havin’ smokes an’ shit. Once he did a whole lotta coke off my phone an’ he tried openin’ up my snake with a knife. I stopped him though. Just reckoned it was the drugs, not a habit or nothin’.”

            She takes a long drink of sweet tea. I turn the grits over and over with my fork, studying her with a vicious intensity, waiting for more.

            “So… why you wanna find him?”

            In Felix’s signature tone: “ _Well_ , he killed my cat and ran. You know, it’d be like, _nice_ to get him reported for animal abuse or something like that.”

            “Can’t you jus’ call the cops an’ have ‘em do it?”

            “No, no… I want to… I want to see him first. I want to do this myself.”

            “Ain’t it interruptin’ your life? Seekin’ him out?”

            “Not really,” I answer curtly.

            “How’d he kill the poor creature?”

            “Drowned it.”

            “What?! Shit, how?”

            “In the toilet.”

            A hand flutters to her chest. “What’d you do?”

            “What is this, a job interview? Look, I want to hunt him down, alright?” my patience is thinning—her stupid dyed-red hair bleeding rabbit fur brown at the roots, her incessant questions, that wicked accent drooling idiocy—and my fury is starting to culminate in finger twitches and a snappy tone. It makes her lean back defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. “I just want to find him and I want to… I want to…”

            “You want to hurt him?”

            “Yes, precisely.”

            She blinks a few times, then shrugs casually. She crosses her arms behind her head in the manner of dream Esme. “I don’t blame you. I wanna hurt him too—perhaps we could together…”

            “I’m really not interested.”

            “No, no, I know,” she says, and grins self-deprecatingly, eyes cast down at her food. “I’m either too fat or too dumb or I’m too ugly.”

            “Don’t say that—I’m just, I’m gay. And you’re a woman.”

            “Thomas is gay too.”

            “Thomas would fuck a deer corpse.” A phantom no-no elbows me a moment too late and I wince immediately, as her eyes start going wet and glittery. “No, no, no, Bonnie, I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

            “I ain’t a _fuckin’_ deer corpse, [my name here], _SHIT_!”

            “I know, I know, that’s not what I mean! I’m just saying, like… Thomas will have sex with anything. I don’t think he’s actually gay.”

            “So I’m just anythin’?”

            “No, Bonnie, you’re killing me here! That was a rude, caustic thing to say—immediate regret, let me assure you. That is not what I meant. You’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’re just—you’re a woman. And I like men.”

            This arouses the attention of an older couple squatted with their T-bone steaks and eggs. I pointedly turn my face away from them—they definitely seem the type to watch the news in hopes of using their pappy’s prized shotguns. In their jeans and baseball caps toting the Texans, our football team (creative name, I know), their slicked back hair and their equally-sized, threatening breasts, the man and wife have a squinted glare. I put the cap back on, regaining my status as a PROUD TEXAN GRANDPA.

            “Come on, Bonnie-Bell,” I try a cooing nickname, which makes her lips flatten in disgust. What can I say? I absolutely adore alliteration. “Let’s get outta here.”

            “We haven’t even _paid_!” she says, and I motion the waitress over, eyeing the bow tied above her curvaceous butt. I wonder how Esme would look in a diner waitress’s outfit. When she gives me my check I slap down a wasted twenty and ten and lead her out of the aromatic shack and into the world again. I check the car I’ve parked—Esme still sleeps in the backseat, mouth open and upper lip pressed to the untinted window, a pink cherry blossom. I gaze at him for a moment before her voice interrupts my fantasies of rapping my knuckles against the window and sharing a kiss separated by an inch of Plexiglas.

            “What if I don’t wanna have sex or nothin’ to do with you? What if I genuinely jus’ wanna see that fucker get hit?”

            “I’ll record it.”

            “What if I wanna hit him too?”

            “You already have.”

            “Oh, please, please,” she chants my name, throwing her mammoth arms around my neck. Stumbling back under her weight, I wheeze and pat her demolition ball of a back with a flat palm, “Take me with you.”

            “I can’t, darling, I can’t. This is personal business. Besides, I’ve got the kid to take care of.”

            “Dylan can deal with me, can’t he?”

            My brows hitch as I stare at the grass under her heels, grass we’ve parked on because this rural community has no Home Owners’ Association, no construction division, and the _Shack_ really is a shack, spurting out of the ground in all its four-walled, wooden and handmade glory, probably not even licensed. I doubt it’s even chicken she was served. Who the fuck is Dylan? I think for a second, then remember the boy’s new—one of his many—pseudonyms, this one coined by me.

            “Well, I don’t know. He’s a bit… transphobic. I wouldn’t want him making you cry or anything.”

            “How would you know that? You know any other transsexuals?”

            “Oh, you know… He frequents the Internet. It’s a hot topic on there. His Facebook page is just full of rotten, right-winged opinions.”

            “Listen, I live in rural Texas, I’m used to it.”

            Desperation bleeds through me. I know she’s just trying to escape her mundane life, I know she’s tired of the routine, and she sees this as an exciting road trip with some glorified perspective, but you, my faithful friend, know the extent of the damage. Plus, I don’t give a single fuck if she dies in mediocrity.

            Fuck me.

            This is a mistake. She’ll probably blab if I leave her—and it’s impossible to keep her here.

            Her phone rings a tinny tune, and I find some momentary relief and thinking time as she fishes it from her purse. She tucks it between her ear and shoulder despite the fact she’s doing nothing with her hands. Perhaps they’re on standby to hug me again. I put my hands in my pockets and gaze up at the trees, watching blots of green leaves trickle down from old oaks in the windless, hot June, a small shower of emeralds so green they turn a shimmery yellow when they fall out of the shade and catch the sun. She grunts, pulling my attention back to her.

            Then her mouth widens in an _O_ —she blinks at me a few times and I wonder what the deal is, if she’s just being a dramatic little shit as usual. She covers her mouth with her free hand, obscuring her yellow teeth.

            “Baby?” she whispers into the phone. I feel a wicked sense of pride, an excitement surge through me like butter. On the other line, the distinctive English accent of my own personal punching bag.

            “Oh, Tommy… I’m _sorry_!”

            When she winks at me, her eyelash flutters off like a summertime moth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the shittiest first drafts of all time and I'm loving it. I hope you all are too. Feedback is appreciated, as always! Thank you all so much for following an original work on a fanfic site. 
> 
> (I wonder how many views this would get if I changed the narrator to Dean and Esme to Sam. But I've never watched Supernatural.)


	14. Rotted Angels

'Tis indeed a miracle, one must feel, that two such heavenly creatures are real, hatred burning bright in the brown eyes with enemies for fuel, icy scorn glitters in the gray eyes, contemptuous and cruel.  
—"Heavenly Creatures," Frances Walsh & Peter Jackson

* * *

 

           On speaker phone, Thomas sounds elegant even in his blubbering tone. The blood boiling it inspires in my veins curls my fists and I rap them against the bone of my knee as he speaks to her, biting my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Sucking iron down—a familiar taste now, since the head wound leaked into my mouth, salty and metallic, last night—I listen.

            “I’ve nowhere to abscond,” he whispers, “I cannot return to the apartment—the abusive maniac… And now, with what’s happened…”

            His long pauses are interspersed with shuddering inhales. He’s always been crying, as long as I can remember, or about to cry.

            “It wasn’t always like this, you know, Bonnie.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “He wasn’t always so abusive.”

            A pause. The wide couple from earlier exits the shack, their red-blistered faces puffed and speculative. I hope and pray they don’t peer into the back seat and recognize the face that has now been printed across missing posters and shown on the television indefinitely. I remove my cap and pick at the wound on my head, in an attempt to either further speculation on myself or pity. They divert their attention to the truck, perhaps disgusted by my display of clawing a fresh scab. It peels at the edges, and I’m tempted to rip it off.

            “There was this one time… Um, I don’t know. It was stupid.”

            She blinks from the phone to me. The oversized truck rolls out of sight, leaving behind a black breath of exhaust smoke.

            Thomas continues: “It was after a phone call from my brother, this kid hasn’t spoken to me in fifteen years. He told me he was getting married. I wasn’t invited, because of, uh, like some shit that happened years before that… It’s not relevant. Anyway, I wasn’t invited, and it’s not like I was desperate to go to a wedding anytime soon. But, you know, I was, uh… I was upset. Dimly realizing that no one really wanted me around, besides you and a few other friends that, you know, just use me for drugs.”

            “Yeah,” she says.

            “I haven’t, you know, read _The Bell Jar_ or anything like that, but uh… You know, I was Plath-inspired.”

            “What’s that mean?”

            “Sylvia Plath is a poet. Was. She killed herself. Head in the oven. Like a gas chamber.”

            “Oh.”

            “So, you know, I’m trying to do the same thing—stick my head in the oven. Obviously, it’s not gas-powered but I was really fucked up, I just thought ovens meant death. It was this go-to instinct… I don’t know why I thought it’d kill me, but the first attempt, the noose and shit—that was just a cry for help. This time, I was really, _really_ trying. So I’m kneeling on the kitchen floor, slumped over with the over on 400 Fahrenheit, cheek pressed to the heating trays, and uh… You know, he came in, with his groceries. I looked up at him from the corner of my eye, I remember seeing his hair draped over bananas… It was so long, and I was thinking about this art piece, just called _Object_ , it was a teacup covered in fur. He dropped his plastic bags of groceries and yanked me out of there by the back of my shirt. He kicked the over door closed. I remember him pressing the off button, yeah, I remember that. I was really sad then, because he was more concerned about the house burning down than me. But then, he got on the ground and instead of slapping me around or something, calling me an idiot, he brought the back of his hand to the marks on my cheek... His hands were really cold, and I didn’t feel the heat on my face until that ice stuck me. I started sobbing like a baby and so he cradled me like one. He didn’t say anything mean, didn’t hit me or yell or ask what the hell I was doing. He just held the back of my head to his shoulder and let his oranges roll over the dirty floor, collecting dust—we both stopped trying to mop at that point. I kept crying, you know, always crying. We just stayed like that for a long time, me halfway in his lap with my feet on the over door, his arm around my waist, hand on the back of my head. Rocking me and singing some classic rock song like a lullaby. His voice is rather nice, really. Rather nice.”

            She looks up at me with a worried bottom lip.

            “That’s real nice, Tommy,” she says after a stretched of silence.

            “Yeah.”

            “Of him.”

            “…Yeah. But that was the only time. Usually he’s awful. I don’t know what came over him that day.”

            I know why he finds this happenstance odd.

            Because it didn’t fucking happen. I never held him as he sobbed post-attempted suicide. I don’t know what this tale is for. I doubt the attempted suicide ever happened. I don’t know if it’s a purposeful lie or somewhere in that scrambled egg lump of a brain he has he retains this memory as true, a byproduct of some powder wiped inside his inner cheek.

            “So you gonna go back?”

            “No, no. It was… it was too rare. He won’t be like that when I come back.”

            “Well, distance makes the heart grow fonder. He wouldn’t punish you for leavin’ an’ givin’ him some peace.”

            “He might for returning and breaking that peace.”

            “Oh, shush.”

            “Also paying full rent must be irritating.”

            She chews her lip hard and sighs, “Do you miss me?”

            “Yeah.”

            “You wanna come over?”

            “…I really don’t know if I should. After what happened, you know, would it be invasive? Tense?”

            “I like tension,” she whispers coolly.

            “I really don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

            “Come over.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah, come over.”

            This weird exchange continues. _Yeah? Yeah. Yeaaah? Yeah. Yeaaaah? Oh yeaaah._ Sounds like a porno. The consensus is a unanimous: _Yeaaaaaaah_. And for a second, I’m frightened. Truly. This is really going to happen. I’m really going to come face to face with a guy that killed my cat and I’m going to blow his brains out and keep on going.

            How come, though?

            Why am I gonna be a murderer? To avenge my kitty-cat? Did the cat even like its life? Was it suicidal in its four-doored life of monotony? Did it beg for escape and have it delivered gracefully—albeit violently—by the giving hand of my dumbass roommate? What has he done besides _annoy_ me? Is it enough to warrant murder?

            And then: by dishing out this murder, would it be assisted suicide?

            Do I want to do Thomas a favor?

            I must consult the smartest person in the vicinity.

            I wake him up by opening the car door. He flops out and holds himself up with his bound legs, blinking rapidly, blearily, squinting as a slant of evening light kisses his face. Scooting back into the car, thankfully, because if Bonnie notices the bound ankles I’ll have to come up with more bullshit.

            “What?”

            “Do I kill Thomas or not?”

            His voice is gravely and exhausted, a few octaves higher. He rubs his eyes with the palm of his hands and shrugs his thin shoulders. “Mm, whether or not to murder someone and live with daily guilt and memory of the horror, or… Just live with the memory of kidnapping.”

            “Shh,” I hush, “I got a witness right here.”

            He peers over my shoulder at Bonnie and then looks at me, lips pursed. “I dreamt of my mother,” he says, “She was in bed with me, back when I was a child and she still let me sleep in bed with her when I had bad dreams. I kept shaking her to try to wake her up and she was angry. I kept trying to tell her I needed help, come help, and she said, ‘no, go away, I’m trying to sleep.’ When she rolled over her face was void.”

            I muse over providing a nod of sympathy, but I have no idea what his intonation of apathy insinuates. So I settle on, “How is this relevant to anything at hand, kiddo?”

            “I just realized I don’t miss her. Not yet, at least.”

            Bonnie walks over and smiles at him. He looks at her and does not cry for help, but smiles weakly back and says, “Hello.”

            “You’re Dylan, huh? I’m Bonnie.”

            He eyes me and I nod with a tilted grin.

            “Yeah. Dylan Klebold,” he says, accepting his new name in stride. I suppose he’s accustomed to pseudonyms by now. “Nice to meet’cha.”

            “So Tommy’s campin’ out in some motel, all his druggie friends ain’t lettin’ him stay at theirs. I wouldn’t either if it wasn’t for you.” Spoken with a lilt at the end of her tone, I try to strain further from the valentine hearts dotting her I’s by offering a roll of my eyes.

            “Sure.”

            “So he gonna be here soon.”

            “How? He doesn’t have a car.”

            “Uber or somethin’, I reckon.”

            Worrying my lip, I stare at Esme intently, who gives me raised eyebrows and not much else. Isn’t he supposed to be my soothsayer at this point? Shouldn’t he be sewing the route to take? “So Dylan and I are supposed to stay at yours ‘til he gets here?”

           “Yeah, guess so.”

            “And then what?”

            “You beat him up!”

            “And then I leave.”

            “Yep.”

            For some reason, this thought infuriates me—even though I want to believe my purpose is greater, putting them in these layman’s terms further exacerbates the pointlessness of this hunt. It reveals far too much care for such an insufficient outcome. I have to come to terms with it: I didn’t care about Sid Vicious _that_ much.

            If I up the ante to murder, the only result it will elicit is punishment on my behalf. Christ, after the phone call, killing the English bastard will probably have him smiling in the coffin. All in all, I just want to bleed destruction. But the fury directed towards Thomas that had culminated just a day ago has simmered due to Esme’s angel breath and Sylvester’s hospitality. Small gifts. Fleeting, small gifts in a stretch of hopelessness.

            But here he comes regardless.

            Shall I leave? Shall I leave and let Bonnie’s mouth expel her day to everyone she meets, shall I allow her to make a blog post and have Cassidy Jefferson, the journalist that detailed Felix’s missing report, inevitably link me to this small town whose name I do not know? Shall I stay stagnant long enough to let this happen?

            Bonnie watches me speculate on possibilities, her heels crunching green fluttering leaves that have died too soon. “We headin’ back to my place?”

            Shall I remove Bonnie and have Thomas arrive in a trailer alone with Bunny, Bunny who has seen me in the same store a cop has? Bunny and Thomas, who would never dream of calling police due to their habitual drug use, but who also would never falter in saving their dear friend and sister. Unless— _unless_.

            “Let’s go for a drive.”

            “I need to get back,” Bonnie says, “I need to pee.”

            “Hop in, then.”

*

            “Why is there a shotgun back here?” Bonnie says over twangy country crooning and Esme’s inconsistent snaps of nail biting.

            “It’s a prop. I’m a painter, you know.”

*

            Small towns are a worse sentence than death. They breed not only boredom, but misconduct. Stapled with few amenities besides American food and gun shows, what really _is_ there to do besides cook meth in a bathtub, shoot some squirrels in your backyard, and masturbate over webcam with a stranger from Kiev, Ukraine? The days slip by like syrup, the pointlessness ever-prevalent, no escape save for literature, and god knows that isn’t a first option here. Copenhagen rots gums away, tobacco slowly burning the jowls of idiots who talk politics but failed senior-year government. The constant buzz of college football fills homes and waitresses return to work with too much concealer on one eye.

            How a transgender woman has lasted here without being beaten to a pulp is beyond me. Shit Town, Texas is a slow disease, contracted at birth. And it’s mortal. Her skin is the color of cheese, with the consistency of cream. Shaved clean and speckled with red spots from a dull razor, she does not emulate that marble-esque visage of the smoothed Esme, nor the sun-kissed honey slick of her sister. She stays in her trailer, as I did my apartment, rotting away in all my boredom, scrolling through feeds of others’ lives, and obtaining an iron deficiency as a result. And this skin is telling in her lack of abuse. Had she been mottled with sunburns, or tanned, it means she’d exposed herself to the world. I wrack her survival up solely to avoiding the cruelty of eastern Texan civilians. Otherwise, she’d have been killed long ago.

            But to live in isolation—is that really living? The Internet can’t _truly_ be real in its offerings of friendship, faith, love. It’s just font, really. And that is her extent of human interaction, save for her sister. And sisterly love isn’t worth saving, is it?

            Oh, the poor silly bitch. Things would be so much easier if only she spent her time outside—for me, at least. Stretching out, she props her heeled feet on my dash and triggers my hair-thin anger. I push her foot off abruptly and swerve out of the way of an oncoming SUV. “Get your shitty hobbit feet off of my dashboard,” I demand, eliciting a snort out of Esme.

            For all his perceived perfection, there’s a cruel distaste to him. He seems even more judgmental than I do—glancing at the overweight with rolled eyes, crossing his arms in the presence of anyone he deems “lesser.” These are things I’ve noted at the apartment. When an acne-caked, slope-chinned, greasy-clothed, slouched, imperfect anyone entered his personal space, he’d get defensive, a cruel cock of his eyebrow putting them in the place of subordinate in some file in his mind. You could see it: a girl who found him cute approaching in her bathing suit, as he sprawled on his towel under the sun. If her posture was insecure or her thighs kissing, if her teeth were crooked, his face would skew in a telltale expression of disgust: snarled lip, scanning eyes, and upturned nose.

            Since last night I’d assumed it was part of the _Esme_ game, but the way he stares at Bonnie with such poison, icepicks and steel, is unmistakably bitchiness. There’s a coldness in his face in the rearview that’s as disturbing at the first glare he directed his American friend the initial time I saw him at the pool. Unadulterated hatred.

            “Don’t be so rude!” Bonnie demands.

            “Ditto.”

            Call me immature, but I’m simply trying to achieve Beulah here in my own self-absorbed peacefulness. Disregard my lack of empathy and focus on my hope. This isn’t Bonnie’s story, this is mine.

            And yet:

            “Hey,” I say, tilting my head, “I’m sorry. Just a pet peeve.”

            “I understand,” Bonnie says, and uses her wrist to carefully wipe the dashboard of any marks she may have left behind—but she hasn’t.

            I check my rearview for further speculation on Esme’s distaste. But he’s looking out of the window again, face drained. A blooming blush the color of dead grass starts crawling up his face.

            “You okay, buddy?” I say cautiously.

            He shakes his head. When I come to a stop he vomits violently with the car door barely open. I love him so much—he doesn’t even want to stain my car. This is what I think of as he opens his mouth and spews silently, only the splash of digested meal on the concrete, the tweeting of evening birds and country radio audible. His insides are pinkish, Pepto Bismol candy colored and aromatic of gastric acid and old chicken. And then he retreats back into the car from his hunched heaving, calmly wiping his chin with the front of his shirt and then crossing his arms over his thin torso.

            There’s a stretch of silence in which he sits still, arms crossed, pink droplets speckling his chin. Then Bonnie lets out a wet sob and she stumbles out of the car, the lack of her weight decompressing it—it’s almost like a tidal wave, and my own seasickness seems to run over me. But I shouldn’t be complaining.

            Because Felix is the one in the backseat being smothered by her thick arms, cradling him like a baby as she bawls loudly, a wailing sound that frightens me. It seems that everyone has reverted into babyish extremes since I’ve kidnapped Felix. Is it simply palpable tension? Are people reacting like dogs before a storm, sniffing out the wet air and losing their minds?

            “Baby, my baby,” she coos, and his eyes go wide, thin brows hitching together. Now his face turns reddish under these ministrations. “Oh, Dylan—I struggled with bulimia my entire childhood.”

            “Yeah?” he squeaks, one of the few things he’s said to her.

            “Oh, it was horrible.”

            “Then maybe you should’ve stopped stuffing your fucking face,” he shrieks, his cool intonation climbing octaves like a step ladder. She leans back, flattening her arms against her sides. She looks between us and then her pinched red face turns furious.

            “You two—you two are assholes. You just want to bring me down. Just because you’re pretty do you think that gives you the right to treat people like me like shit?”

            “Bad touch does!” Felix shrieks, and laughs hysterically, head tossed back. His teeth glint in the orange light, canines wet. I don’t laugh along, surveying the hurt in Bonnie who’s slumped in the backseat of the car. Her posture is defensive, curled in on herself, wounded. She looks like Carrie White in the locker room.

            “I was only trying to comfort you.”

            “You smell like shit and I hate you.”

            Enthralled by this exchange, it takes me a delayed few seconds to realize that she’s crying mute tears, lips pulled to stretch her bulldog jowls, her anemic pink gums studded with yellow blunt teeth. I watch as she blubbers and then opens the door, fixing her skirt at the back as she runs off.

            This is not my concern. She won’t get anywhere. I glare at Felix. “She’s just a pawn. You didn’t have to be so cruel.”

            “She touched me.”

            As I follow her through the sluggish heat, she turns over her shoulder and shrieks, “Don’t you dare! Don’t even speak to me! I don’t blame Thomas at all! If you had another cat, I’d smother it too!”

            _But you just did_ , I think deliriously, hands held out in front of me to calm her.

            “You and your stupid nephew! My God, how ignorant can you fuckin’ be?”

            “I gave you a fair warning.”

            As I advance she retreats, eyes narrowed and sticky, one eyelash remaining. Rheum and tears cake the smudged eye makeup no doubt a purchase of welfare if the powdery pastels flaking off in their drugstore heap are anything to go by.

            “It was an unnecessary cruelty!”

            Christ, what a pathetic life.

            “Darling… I need your help.”

            “Shove it.”

            “You want unnecessary cruelty?” I ask, advancing closer and closer as she trips off the curb, staggering in her heels over the tangled weeds of the wild Texan landscape, unforgiving as Anton Chigurh; unforgiving as me. I stick my hands in the pockets of my jeans and keep leading her back. She tries to turn on her heel and run. It catches on an ingrown root. I thank the curving trees, mahogany bark winding violently through the dirt, I thank the matted leaves and the dry grass, and even the heat. I thank Beulah, a connection with nature taught by Coleridge, as it bends and fills me with a hope insurmountable by any negativity. These perfect moments—they really are worth living for.

            I put my shoe over her heart to pin her down. She grasps at my foot as I press down over her sternum. I have a strange flashback to medical science class in high school, bent over my plastic dummy, giving slow chest compressions as I became certified for CPR. As if anyone reckoned I would be trusted with a life to this extent.

            _And if you give them too fast, or too vigorously_ … Mrs. Parker’s kind, old woman voice repeats somewhere in the back of my head, _You could break the ribs, causing permanent damage!_

            When I bring my foot down over her chest, I’m reminded of an eggshell cracking against a counter, a twig snapped underfoot, a crisp break of celery, the hard first crunch into an apple. She shrieks and gurgles, struggling like a caught fish. It disgusts me, how she squirms. But this is not a finalizing technique. The human sure can take a beating. I stomp over and over, three times in succession when I think it’s futile. When I return to the car, leaving her shrieking on the grass only twenty feet away, I stop to give Esme a fleeting kiss, the first since that eon ago in the apartment. His mouth tastes of bile and sweat, lips cold and dry. The sad anxiety in his mouth tings on my tongue like the skin beneath a loose tooth. I grab the shotgun, and finally— _finally_ —check the chamber.

            Bulletless. _Leonard, you bastard_.

            Felix says, “A gun without ammunition is a club.”

            It takes me fifteen, twenty more minutes until the pulse stops like a fan slowing. It stops the way the mailman stops delivering letters to an empty house.

*

            Because of the proximity of the Mexican border I begin to pray, but because I hold no commitment to religion I pray to the closest thing I can find to a deity. I pray to Esme, who sits in the backseat unfazed by the red blood speckling my face like liquid acne. In fact, he seems almost smug, looking down at me in reverence with the calm smile of the Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus. Hand on my bald scalp, I whimper into the knobs of his knees, “Thank you, thank you,” a bizarre mania bleeding out of me. The sky is purplish with oncoming sunset despite the late night falls in Texan summer, and I reckon it must be later than I imagined. I feel as though the insides of an eyelid are shutting around me, enveloping me against an all-seeing, watchful entity. Black-eyed as the Middle Eastern cop in _Classic Downtown_. My mouth shapes silent thanks against his cords, soft and gentle motions, weeping lips horizontally spread. I pray over my paranoia of this ever seeing eye, the red pupil of the sun sinking behind the trees, but this is no comfort. I feel as though it will peer from below, as I dig earth from its foundation.

            I thank my God—Esme—for the Texas-Mexican border.

            My disposal method is unconventional in the eyes of Ted Bundy, who dismembered and hid them lazily, sometimes even not at all—no wonder the dumb bastard got caught. Unconventional in the eyes of Dahmer, dumping lye and preserving bones statically, human smell seeping through the walls of an apartment complex, far too populated to go unnoticed. Unconventional to the Green River Killer, who… Well, it needs no elaboration.

            My method belongs to the Mexican drug cartel.

            I finish my worship and saw through Esme’s duct tape, staring up at his peaceful, reverent face. I realize dimly I’ve been kneeling in his vomit. I have a piece of him on me now. His DNA. Spikes of Velcro lick at the insides of my skin and make my clammy hands shake. I look like hell’s washed over, surely, hot blood on my face—and Esme looks as serene as a well-fed babe, full of milk and honey, fat in its joy.

            I pursue the drug cartel’s method through peanut butter. At a convenience/pharmacy mom-and-pop shop about seven, eight miles from where I’ve stashed the heavy body in the thicket of trees, lights buzzing fluorescent, and heavy of chemicals and cleanliness—lotions scented with skin benefits and not flowers, baby wipes, medication. I nick a package of baby wipes and some Calvin Klein underwear. And the entire shelf of Peter Pan chunky peanut butter. Chunky, because that incites the use of teeth, and not just tongue.

            This will incite the wild animals more.

            I pay a tired looking elderly man with thick glasses, his gnarled fingers embedded with wrinkles so deep they may as well be drawn in ink, a stark contrast to the soft flesh of Esme’s pale hands, my hat still placed firmly upon my head, and I am also thankful of the lack of video cameras. The place touts its establishment date on the sign: **1899**. The very building’s doorway is intended for people who would’ve held someone standing at six-foot as a giant.

            A trademark of scorned dealers, as I imagine the Italian Mafia had methods of disposal, I take this copycat disposal method and return to my spot in the dark woods with Esme in tow now—he seems confined to his position and, surprisingly, unfearful of my capability, although I currently like to maintain that he is submissive in the presence of a murderer.

            The body is wicked. I can’t imagine why anyone would take the method of burning a body—already its scent is more pungent than the expelled vomit from Esme that triggered this series of events. That ain’t pork chops cooking—just a pork chop.

            Esme toes her bloated foot with his sneaker, purple toes sticking out of her heels, shiny as raw squid. Already the heat has attracted swarms of flies that I have to keep smacking though their presence represents decomposition, though she’s only entered pallor mortis, whitening under the last dregs of the summer light. I leave them be.

            Or I leave them _bee_.

            Ha-ha.

            I have to slather her body with my bare hands. It is the only time I’ve felt her up—I bet her ghost is getting all wet. Insensitive? You bet your ass. I’ve heard people say that it seems strangely shameful to be in the presence of the dead when alive. I feel a strange disconnect, like I’m feeling up a mannequin. I do not care for her once-beating heart, her fleeting interests. What would she have done had I not killed her? Live on in her desolation and die.

            Esme has her phone in hand, his slender fingers working at the touch screen in an attempt to unlock it. The glow of it illuminates the shimmer of sweat that cakes him, the hollow of his neck pooling with liquid. We’ve walked about one mile from the street into the twisted oaks, scratched and sweaty, heaving her dead body. Esme hadn’t complained once though scratches of branches mark his skin like an ostentatious thirteen-year-old discovering the attention of pity through self-harm.

            Peanut oil drifts into the air, a slick sound like a pussy or water splashing. I wince when I have to drag my hands over the scars of a botched surgery in her nether regions, looking skyward. Her clothes have long since been removed, and then we’ll burn them. As for her shoes—they’re a lost cause, her bulbous feet impossible to loosen from the small heels.

            I can never eat peanut butter again, I realize, my hands coated in an odd, indulgent stickiness, as I use my hands to scoop out lump after lump from the jar. It almost becomes a clinical procedure, both Esme and I focused at our respective tasks, working in silence save for the hum of cicadas, a never ending shrill that makes the forest seem alive with silent witnesses, and the plastic uncapping sounds of the jars of peanut butter, the occasionally vibrations from the phone as Bonnie gets a text or update she’ll never read.

            It takes Esme two hours to get into her phone, her password revealed to be thindiamond—how he guessed that I’ll never know—and an extra for me to thoroughly coat the body and remove personal evidence the best I can.

            As I walk out with jars upon jars in hand, I watch a yellowish, bony cat slink out from beneath what looks like a bamboo tree, and trot over to where the aromatic butter lures him. At least I can take care of _one_ cat.

*

            Star Motel is a one-story chain of what appears to be grounded mobile homes, forming a stiff U in the ground. It looks like it’s been planted by aliens. I pay for the room in cash and the greasy man propped up at the desk barely blinks when Felix comes in from the car, skinny and youthful, face rounded with infantilism.

            The sign’s ghastly green neon sign illuminates the U of the buildings as I walk to our room labeled **_01_**. It casts both of us in a shine that turns us into Frankenstein’s monster. I study him for a while, his limp hair looking darker, and then I lead him into the room.

            Stained porcelain does not keep him from a bath. The light is fluorescent and medicinal in nature, and I die to see him naked in the bath, but I settle on the bed, offering him privacy. I’m tired, very tired, but my mind whirrs in paranoid overdrive. I get nude myself, wiping myself down with baby wipes in a slow, mechanical manner. When I peel the splotches of blood from my skin it leaves behind warm, pink residue that I have to scrub further until the baby wipe is soiled. I do this patiently and listen to Felix splash quietly. There’s something dripping peacefully, and I think of light rain. The smell of jasmine drifts coolly, therapeutically, from the warm bathroom. He’s left the door ajar but when I look up I only see my worn, ruined face staring back at me in a mirror crusted with white stains. I turn a lamp on to see the globe of my head shining yellowishly, matching the color of the peeling wallpaper decorated in baby angels praying to God, wielding horns in their soft hands, rose petals faded in strips beneath them, smelling of mothballs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I redraft this, I'm definitely getting rid of the placeholder art references. They're not an excuse for substance, blehhhh.
> 
> Thank you again for all the reviews and feedback. Longest chapter so far, I think.


	15. Here's the Sex Scene

I said I wanna get next to you  
I said I wanna get close to you  
You wouldn't want me have to hurt you too, hurt you too?

—"Sex Type Thing"  
Stone Temple Pilots

* * *

 

            “…After an extensive search of the apartment complex, the kidnapper is now definitely identified as a one [omitted—that being me]. Standing six-foot-one, with brown hair and brown eyes, the twenty-seven-year-old absconded his apartment complex on a Thursday evening, at about 8:00 PM, on June 27th. With him was Felix Broad, the son of Brian and Jennifer Broad. Armed with a shotgun, his parents, pegged [ha] with grief, did not intervene when the man demanded their son, fearful he might kill them—or worse, Felix himself. Oddly enough, though currently labeled an abduction, the child apparently went with [me] _willingly_ , almost casually, now understood as a previous acquaintance of the kidnapper. However, one tenant of the Sorel apartments testifies that they may be more than that, implying that mutual consent was given, and this was a _planned_ runaway scheme.

            “Doug Richardson, neighbor of [me] has heard the young boy refer to the kidnapper as his ‘boyfriend,’ implying a more intimate relationship. Still, we shall not ignore the twelve year age difference.” And so the screen cuts to Doug in his mustached suspicion, betraying me word by word. His colors (bread and hamster fur) flash upon the bed sheets from the ancient, flickering screen.

            “I never suspected anything in [me] until the boy moved in. I suppose we all have secrets. Once I confronted him about it, a few days before his, uh, ‘disappearance.’ He was very sweaty. _Very_ sweaty. He looked nervous, and kept trying to avoid my questions, _avoid_ me. I asked him, ‘what have you been doing with that boy?’ And he ran off, lookin’ real scared. _Real_ scared.”

            Back to the redheaded newscaster, her long curl of hair draped carefully over one blazer-clad shoulder, thin eyebrows knitted accusingly. “Brian and Jennifer Broad are not present to comment on the matter, currently working with police on the fact of the matter. And yet, the story gets stranger. Also missing is the tenant’s roommate, Thomas Crawford. While the police will not offer details on the state of the room, they’ve taken extensive measures to revere it as a crime scene, searching for prompts, or possible clues as to where they’ve been. The kidnapper drives a 1999 beige Nissan Altima, and his license plate is V88-XDN. The kidnapper’s hair was shaved, as were his eyebrows, on the night of the abduction. It is unknown what he was wearing…”

            I turn the television off, setting me in darkness again, chunk of light only spilling in from the open door of the bathroom.

            Rolling onto my stomach, I shoot out two texts from Bonnie’s phone, one to Bunny:

                        “Spending the night w/ [me]. See u some other time.”

            To which she replies with varying smiley faces.

            And to Thomas:

                        “Car troubles. Wanna meet me @ the motel I’m stayin tonite?”

            To which he replies:

                        “grabbed my own motel room. no big deal. see u tomorrow.”

            One day. One fucking day and already I see the end of this journey. Though I’m sure no one will ever find the body, this little bitch’s disappearance will inevitably be linked to me through her sister, or Thomas—though I do intend to kill Thomas, certainly. And they’ve already got my ass for Esme.

            Perhaps I can keep putting Bunny off. Say she’s moved in with me. We’re honeymooning. Don’t worry about it—we’re looking for homes, don’t worry about it. It’s just been so busy with the kids, don’t worry about it. We’ll try to get in touch soon, I sure do miss you, it’s just been so busy.

            Or I can take an aggressive route. Estranged siblings are common, aren’t they?

            And—and cars…they’re easy to drive into a lake, aren’t they?

            My musing is interrupted by a strange stretch of peace.

            Esme is now audible when he bleeds my desire. Eroticism is bred from your imagination.   
“Nothing will ever be as perfect as you can imagine it.” Though I cannot see him, he soundtracks the dreaminess he exudes in his very person. The soft water sounds from the bath inject desire in me more prevalent than a blowjob or sexual offering from anyone else ever has. My mind offers artful images of a water nymph submerged in seafoam, the creases of sun-kissed skin slicked with salt and glowing golden, the tone of a god. Nereid he is, I listen to light splashes. The smell of jasmine, though—and it is definitively jasmine, I know because of the tea leaves—had no arousing element familiar to me. And now lavender will never be enough; detergent, sweat, iron, hair gel, and skin will pale in comparison to jasmine soap. This new damp scent will forever be sewn in me in association to my post-murder erection that drips anxiety and need. My arousal is as hot as spilt blood, the warm insides of a girl’s grey brain matter. It throbs in my head and neck and cock.

            Oh, I’m so heinous, laying on a motel bed printed with yellowed, faded magnolias, staring at mayonnaise-colored stain on the ceiling beneath the whirring blades of a short-bladed fan, my cock aching against the cloth of my jeans. I don’t make a move to jerk off, breathing in slow and ignoring the possibility of cops knocking at the door.

            On my stomach, I twitch at the first beckoning.

            At the second, I stand up and lean in the doorway, having walked to Esme’s calling voice.

            Warm damp noises and cleanly leaves.

            Freckled skin bubbled and shiny, Esme’s chin resting on the rim of a rotting, porcelain tub, his glower visibly through the wet limp curls on his forehead. The blue bar carved beneath his grip. Jaw tight and neck bruised, eyes pinkish globes like Rainer cherries floating in a jar, he does not look like the initial Esme I ogled poolside with his curled and primed hair, glowing and healthy and soft. A wounded fawn, accusatory and thin wristed, bruised knee pulled to the birdcage of his hollowed chest, I have to balance myself with a hand on the counter, slick with condensation from the hot bath that’s turning his skin pinkish—I understand that I’m swooning.

            “I’ve always been fond of marathon baths,” says Felix. He nods to the toilet, brown mildew rimming the inside of it, a single horsefly floating in the shallow green water. I close the seat and sit beside him, looking down at his wonderful form posed Castor and Pollux-esque in its casual and sculpted beauty, mottled by me and me alone, my own artful additions I sadistically want to think. “Time seems to slow down in here. No one interrupts me and reinforces a schedule upon you. Always so offended by nudity...”

            And so there is his method of escaping the instilled routine: I’ve enjoyed my own baths but I cannot presently say that it encapsulates self-fulfillment. I seem to be more dramatic of a person. Taking my shoes off, I sit back against the toilet and watch him—and it is bliss, to see him in his wondrous nakedness, so much so that I now feel ashamed to be in the presence of such beauty, like a horrible old man wandering onto the set of some high fashion model’s photoshoot, but even they would become shadows of their alleged gorgeousness in the presence of this otherworldly boychild.

            He reaches back and scratches a small red pimple on his shoulder, and it pops and bleeds red and I’d kiss it without a second thought.

            “So,” he says, stretching out from his encasement, one heel propped upon the rusted faucet, white dried skin crusting beneath his big toe, blisters and dirt embedded into the hardened flats of his feet, toenails blackened with the earth. I forgot I took him when barefoot—he hadn’t said a thing when trudging through the forest with me, hefting the weight of our crimes. “What do we do now, my love?”

            I wince at the moniker. I can’t tell if it’s tender or snide.

            “You think I don’t know what I’m doing?” I challenge.

            “If I say yes, will I die?”

            “You weren’t fearful in the slightest of her murder, you psychopath.”

            “Oh, trust me—if you hadn’t, I would’ve.”

            “And why’s that? She was only trying to—”

            “Be nice? Oh, yes, isn’t everyone? I can’t stand pathetic people smearing their shit onto you in relation to you. Trying to make you like them. I couldn’t stand to be that pitiful, never.”

            “And to think, I thought you might thrive off of the media’s attention! You just wait, dude, there’ll be a candlelight vigil in your name. You’re gonna be the next JonBenet Ramsey.”

            “No implications of incest, though—and I’m not dead,” he closes his eyes and smiles serenely. “I’m fool’s gold.”

            “No, you’re not.”

            “I wonder sometimes what you see in me. Is it our mutual existentialism? I didn’t display it _that_ much back at the Sorel.”

            I bite my lip. How caustic, how _boring_ would it be to admit I’ve taken him not because he wants more from life. Not because he refuses to accept the world the way it was handed to him, but because I think he’d look good sheathing my cock? His mindful benefits came only _after_ my decision to steal this child for purely erotic purposes.

            But, oh: that’s how all of my friendships begin—Sylvester, in the Katz’s bathroom; Bunny, behind the _Downtown Vintage_ counter. And can you really call them friendships rather than parasitic leeching? It’s pathetic, how I’m ruled by sex and how everyone allows themselves to be too. Besides Esme, who is so unaware of the desire he exudes in his dumb 70’s pants and his arm flung over his eyes, his slouched walk, his poses untailored by imitation, that occur to him naturally as they do with the great images of beauty: David, Tadzio, Eros, Apollo. He does not need to make present his unmentionables to inspire sexual needs, who would never craft a purely sexual offering. His nudity does not change my opinion of his beauty—if anything, I see just how perfect he is clothed as he is unclothed.

            His upper lip had the gentle bowing dip of a porcelain doll, thin and pink atop the plush bottom, made to quirk and dimple his cheek in a mischievous smirk, inside his mouth a second canine overlapping the first, with eyes not too large—not like I prefer—but large enough to accentuate his pleasant face, and assure his status a handsome young man as he grew, features correlated but not squintish. The color of his irises are that of peridots, a gentle gemstone, and they shine intelligently—ivy league. They wrap his impenetrable pupils. His eyelashes are dark strands like butterfly legs beneath a telescope, waterline anemic white and watery.

            And best of all: he does not even seem remotely aware of this. He values his mind. I doubt he even knows how lovely he is, untailored in his appearance and never checking to see if his presence arouses or inspires jealousy.

            “I think you’re the only good person in the world,” I decide on, gritting my teeth at how cheesy it sounds.

            “I just assisted in postmortem disposal.”

            “But you understand that it won’t change the world at all.”

            “And that makes me good?”

            “To me, it does.”

            He opens one eye and studies me, skeptically, in a cartoonish way that makes me smile at him and wave. He waves back. I was his wounded foot with the soap and he giggles a machine-gun fire laugh, toes curling and tendons tightening. He doesn’t whimper once.

*

            And this is the part you all care about:

            The sheets dampen under Esme’s back, for he has a strange superstition about motel towels and how they’re dyed not with bleach but semen, and he doesn’t trust that impeccable whiteness in the rotted, peeling room. If it was a little piss stained but holding up well, fine, he can stand that.

            (This does not apply to hotels.)

            These childish fears—grotesque as they are—suit more Esme than Felix, and I can’t help but grin at the thought of the perfect, porcelain boy run his hands over the towel, nose crinkled in disgust, maybe a tongue stuck out— _bleh_.

            Once again my possessive complex is aroused, wanting to mark this tiny, innocent bird as mine, mine, mine. It feels only right to fulfill this unconsummated desire that I’ve been aware of since the moment Esme and I laid eyes on each other. And I do not care if this desire is mutual.

            I bend down over him, knee at the sharp bone of his hip, heat emanating from his flushed skin, hair slicked back off his head to reveal a face still greenish, as it has been since the kidnapping, and I suppose he’s carsick and anxiety sick. I bend down to the elvish slant of his ear and bite it, his taste of sweat and fear like milk and salt, and for a long time I sit there with my teeth clamped upon his ear, his heart thudding beneath me alive as a twitching cockroach hit once but persistent to live.

            “Don’t be nervous,” I say.

            “Certainly not,” his response is crusted with dismissive black humor, eyebrows raised upon his head, tone dripping with deprecation. I place my hand upon his pale knee and push it to his chest, and close my eyes to duck my head inside the crook of his neck, warm and fragrant, the heat making me blush by proxy, as though it’s seeping directly into my cheeks. I bloom like a cherry blossom and he sets a tiny hand on my back, crawling up my shirt to scratch at a pimple as he had done with his shoulder.

            “What’re you doing?” I whisper into his neck, and he slings an arm around my hips and whines.

            “Nothing.”

            I grin and pull out of his neck to look at him. He rolls his eyes and keeps picking at the skin there. “I just want to get it.”

            “No, it’s cute.”

            “Shut up.”

            Quiet madman I am, I enter him with the grace of a doctor subtly inserting his sedated patient and rut him as he stares past me, never responding in word, only in noise. Those primal sounds of humans getting humped are as ancient as the sea. We use no protection because there is a bonding finality in this action, these final insertions and pants and there’s nothing either of us could do to hurt each other, because we are made for each other and now we’re here together. We have to protect each other. We have an intense secret crawling beneath our skin, both as strong as Samarkand satin. Or more fittingly: kidskin. And if it is to be shared we’re both headed for demise. And maybe we are anyway, shared or not. As it is, both our names are in some police force database waiting and watching and I’ve driven myself into a hole in the matter of one day, but for now I don’t care, and he blinks and his eyelashes catch watery droplets that catch the moonshine like dew, and when I push his thin legs back to his chest, not even the slightest amount of skin rolls in folds, and then he bites me and the mark in my neck is embedded with duality from the mutation of his teeth. I’m his.

            My consummation is made by bitten nails embedding my skin in two long lines, cat claws scratches of a treasure-map X over my back, my shirt shed long ago somewhere in the fray, jeans wracked down over my sweating thighs.

            I begin to fall asleep on top of him while he wiggles like a caught pet that you try to crush in a hug. Gray light slants in from the crack in the dusty rose colored curtains, the first inches of sun-up that cast Felix’s sweating frame in cool light, large eyes staring at me, emotionless a mosquito’s. He presses his thighs together and then faces the television.

            I look at it too. A cricket crawls on top of the grey, hollow frame.

            That’s what he stared at as I fucked him.

*

            The morning is noon for us both, I wake up first with a shock of hard anxiety that spikes through me. I roll over and check Bonnie’s phone on the nightstand—the poor lonely girl has nothing. I’ll have to smash the thing soon, after the obligatory Thomas murder. True love will be found in the dead folks—and the problem is solved.

            I am again inspired to break conventions. Strangely enough, the cold light of day has no negative impact on me like the heady darkness of night, might, all its flaws culminating in bed. There are not yet mistakes in this day. It takes a lot to pull hopeful idealism out of a madman, you know.

            (Don’t correct madman with idiot, bitch, don’t you dare.)

            I crawl out of bed to pull the curtains back, strangely free from the tangled sheets that I’d usually melt into with refusal on the hot morning. A still willow tree outside that I hadn’t noticed before, back-dropped by a road lined with mailboxes and a red car strolling lazily down it, dapples in the golden light of the day, spilling honey over Felix’s sleeping frame, his pallor made more prevalent by the contrast of the light on his skin.

            Messy sheets wrapped tiredly around his ankles, bird-arms spread in the sheets, a pearlescent dollop of cum splattered on his hipbone—do I love him? I do, I do. It’d be so much easier if I didn’t, to dispose of him now that I’ve claimed him and continue with my journey in unconventional discovery. Wait, no. That makes it sound like a post-college trip to the Bahamas. This is far more important than that.

            I shower and jerk off with the jasmine soap pressed beneath my nose, calling forward memories of white elongated hands gripping my flesh, turning to the burning stream and closing my eyes to focus on the sting of heat seeping into the cracks of my person, cracks marked by Esme, the porcelain doll in bed with blood under his nails. He fizzles and boils within me, jasmine child burning bright at the edges of my skin and licking at the open wounds with this desire he’s instilled not consciously. In his falsity and his reality, I love him, I love him.

            In the main room in my second white shirt, Felix sits up on his elbows, seemingly drained. His moodiness is palpable. Even the dappled sun seems dimmer with his lowered eyebrows.

            “What is it?”

_I’m kidnapped. I’m an accomplice. I’m a victim. I was raped._

            No: “I’m hungry.”

            The last drive I can make in this car is to Kentucky Fried Chicken. In aviators with blue rims snatched from the Motel lobby desk, and PROUD TEXAS GRANDPA once again placed upon my scalp, I spend a tenner on KFC’s Bargain Bucket. On the ride back I look for bodies of water to deposit my car.

            Lake Conroe is an option, I muse as I pull back to the motel, and I squat behind the car and pry my license plate’s metal edges. Too tight. My poor, delicate hands. I shake them out and get the bucket out, return to the room and set it on Esme’s bed, where he’s flopped on his stomach in the nude, sheet drawn over the apricot flesh of his ass, watching some television show that features a worried looking overweight woman nervously pressing a cherry bit to her lip. In an Irish accent she whimpers to the camera: “I con’t, I con’t. Ebsolutely not.”

            I set the greasy bucket down in front of him and he peers curiously into the salted contents. I hate to do it, fill this perfection with junk food made with stress and a deep fryer. But I can’t exactly handpick candied violets and caviar and watercress crackers and Grey Goose for the boy—not yet, anyway. (Look at me, desperately attempting to flee society’s molds and conforming to the human’s product of luxury. But oh, I don’t mind that _historical_ societal convention—just the current one of limitation and cyclicals.) Sherry and meringue cookies await the boy.

            He picks a chicken leg from the bucket and looks at it critically, with a smirk, the way a curious child might see a cock in its first sexual encounter. I sit down on the couch across from him and study him as he diverts his attention to the television, its technicolor turning his face into a neon kaleidoscope. He watches dutifully and runs his jagged thumbnail at the bone of the chicken, and peels the skin off, eats it in strips that wet his fingers with grease. He scrapes the meat clean of the batter with his teeth, the way a child always has. Uncapping the attached plastic cup of gravy, he looks at the bare meat, salted but pallid with less enthusiasm. Still, he digs his teeth into the meat and tears it piece by piece, dipping it after every bite with a lavish dollop of gravy that drips brown over it and slides onto his fingers. When the meat thins further so that flakes clinging to the bone, he peels that off bit by bit with pinched fingers, and scrapes it clean with his teeth until the white, overcooked stiffness of the bone remains with a bare wrap of skin at the end. He polished it like a starving man. Setting it back into the bucket, he sucks his fingers into his mouth and cleans them delicately with pursed lips, replacing the foreign liquids with saliva. A string of it attaches from his bottom lip to his finger—anyone else would find the sight disgusting, misophonia (literally ‘the hatred of sound,’ but it really means chewing noises in most modern cases) triggering immediately at the wet noises.

            But me? I look at his greasy lips dusted with dots of battered crumps and watch him wipe it with the back of his lily white hand, and I feel my cock seep pre-cum. He digs into the bucket for a sequel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ironically aware title, woohoo.
> 
> I hate writing sex scenes. Food euphemisms are way more fun.
> 
> As always, this is unedited, probably shobby and full of mistakes, but I tried. Thank you for all feedback and kudos.


	16. The Unexciting Downfall of Thomas Crawford

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper  
Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper  
We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper  
Baby I'm your man

—"(Don't Fear) The Reaper"  
Blue Öyster Cult

* * *

 

            For a long time, I wanted to be a police officer.

            The sensation slowly fizzled out at the prospect of the community of cops, the social interaction they must endure. Not the technicalities—I’d considered forensics, too—but the fact I’d be talking to a line of cops familiar to me for years upon years, in which I’d have to depend on them, and have to get to know them. I’d be trapped in a car with a partner I’d most definitely dislike. (Just look at Thomas.) Local citizens would recognize me. I’d become _known_.

            As for the ethical seesaw of police brutality, I was never entirely concerned with it. You’d be stupid to think I’d ever care.

            So that idea was out of the window the minute I’d seen a group of chummy cops talking about how their buddy was going grey, and how it’d been so deep chestnut not twenty years ago. It was in my college cafeteria, this group of old cops with shining sunburnt globes of heads laughing and knocking about plates of watery and flavorless pasta drowned in Velveeta cheese sauce.

            It was more depressing than _my_ life. And they didn’t even know it because they had wives with highlighted blonde hair to go home to and a couple of kids on a football team smoking weed behind their backs, and they’ve been told all their life that that was all they needed.

            Should I be jealous? Mediocrity at least means they’re placated. No lucidity to plague them into abduction and murder.

            Why I initially wanted to be a cop is certainly no longer shocking to the dear reader: I wanted to see dead bodies. Now I suppose I have. _The thrill is gone_ …

            See, death is so very shocking to the masses, as if it doesn’t happen every hour. It’s the most boring thing in the world, actually. The eternal things of the ocean and the sun dissipating might be disturbing, but the ants that they provided life for dying out is only natural. Don’t get me wrong, seeing things that the dead person beside you can no longer see, speculate on, muse over, be shaded beneath, inhale, and touch—well, it is rather off-putting. But once you disconnect from that humanity and study the technicalities of the rotting frame of a body, you’re finally aware of your mortality.

            I needed that for a long time. Had I died as Bonnie had, leaving behind a legacy of crumpled snack cake wrappers and over fifteen-thousand dollars in welfare purchases, the essential nature of nothingness would be my only history. At least in _my_ lifetime—that life starting about two days ago—I’ve created my own infamy in the state of Texas.

            The world will go on without Bonnie like it’ll go on without Felix and like it’ll go on without me.

            Unless I make some stamp on the world.                                    

            Now, I’m not looking for fame. I’m just looking for proof of existence.

_Once, I lived._

            Today a parade brings these types of previously-mentioned cops to block off the streets on the northernmost side of the motel, Texan fanfare playing solely for a local football game between high schools—something like that, it’s all I can get out of flags printed with Vikings—and the entire town has lined the roads, population less than two hundred, sidewalks full of litters of cherry-red-faced children, chubby and pinched, and depressed fathers with bored housewives tapping away— _clack clack clack_ —with square acrylic nails at their cell phones.

            I watch through the half-drawn curtains, my dick in his ass, thigh slung over his hip as he keeps his face in his crossed arms, stomach bloated from chicken in an almost charming manner.

            “Crowds are so disgusting,” I decide after voicing my existential thoughts between thrusts, hand on the back of his head, twisted in his mop of curled hair.

            Isolationism is heady in its selfishness. Almost like a dream, aloneness inspires unreality.

            For the past six hours, after Felix’s greasy lunch, he has drowned us in make-believe, in which he is again Esme and I am playing the part of an alleged “Dante,” in which I’ve adopted a French accent to match his. Unpracticed (and almost offensive in its inaccuracy) as it was, he seemed satisfied with it, and walked around the room in my boxers demanding in pose and tone the attention he rightfully deserved, gazing out the window and in a gentle childish pitch dreaming up the rolling waves of an ocean that did not exist, commentating on the effervescent seafoam that lapped at the sands. When a vehicle passed, the drivers were designated the frequenters of the “beach,” and they all wore swimsuits, which coordinated with the car’s paintjob. _What lovely, bright red shorts,_ he’d say when a red car passed, driver a sunglass-clad man with a jutting jaw.

            Then Dante would lean over with a palm on the window, hand upon his hip, and we’d agree that the large woman driving the Chevrolet was just not suited to walk among tanners in her silver, holographic bikini. She could just _blind_ someone in two fashions: with her “repugnant form” (his words, not mine) and her bathing suit, so shiny it really could hurt the eyes, and it was censoring the more repulsive parts of her body, surely untouched. This derived from the woman’s glittery silver truck reflecting a glint of unforgiving summer light and throwing it into our eyes simultaneously.

            The one time I tried to break character to text Thomas that again I’d be late, wait for me, Esme skipped up to me and crossed his arms over his chest, lips pursed judgmentally. He landed a surprisingly blunt kick to my knee and yelled, “No one ever pays attention to me! No one!” before landing onto the mattress on his back, pulling his anatomically-frightening thin legs under his arms and rocking onto his back in a semblance of Dominique Swain in her performance of _Lolita_. ‘I’m not going and you can’t make me!’ she’s said.

            “I should die, no one would even notice!” Esme cried. And whether Felix was so absorbed in his character or if he was just a rather talented actor, the undeniable truth was that tears shone in his eyes, glittery and wet, and when they rolled down his cheeks Dante took the opportunity to grasp his chin and confess his undying love for him despite the familial and lawful restrictions, and how they’d be together regardless, causing Esme to gasp in relief as I drew my tongue up the salty, silvered tracks lining his face. On that sweet, fair, summer morn the two of us planned our escape from France. “Star of my eyes,” Dante said, “sunlight of my being, you, my angel and my passion! Where shall we go?”

            And Esme pointed to the open window with a long arm marked with fingerprints, and said: “There,” referring his made-up sea, “Where there is no one else.”

            Had Esme not been expelling his bowels when his parents were sobbing on screen, cawing for their “baby,” their “everything,” perhaps the decision might not be so drastic. I was almost moved by the statements, the worn bags beneath Jennifer’s pale eyes, the wrinkles lining Brian’s foreheads, redness rimming their waterlines, stress gritting their teeth as they shakily made their announcements in search of their boy.

            They beckoned: “Felix… Whatever we’ve done wrong to make you go with that man so willingly… Please, we’ll change. We’re worried about you. He’s dangerous. We just want you _home_ ,” this final word brought upon another onset of tears.

            _God_ , I thought, _I make a lot of people cry_.

            This grief affects me little and when Felix returns with wet hands I suck the fingers into my mouth under the guise of Dante and he asks me if they taste like salt, for he’s just washed them in the sea.

            I didn’t ask him if that meant he’d pissed on his hands.

            They did taste like salt.

            Now I stare at the parade and thrust lazily between his legs shiny with fluid which Esme has dubbed brine. “There are a lot of people out there,” sweat brims on my forehead and not from the sexual effort, for the anxiety drags all the blood from my cock back to my heart and my fingers shake viciously with twitches of horror.

            “Mm,” Felix mumbles. “Perhaps this is the right time to kickstart your career as a domestic terrorist. Oh, wait…”

            Snide with my dick in his ass. I have to hand it to him, he’s quite a man’s man.

            Rather than argue, I murmur into his hair, “Lots of cops.”

            “Well, when focused on this event, perhaps they won’t notice you absconding.”

            “Don’t be stupid.”

            He giggles into his arms and squirms until I slip out of him limply. “Say you do get rid of the car—what then?”

            “Steal another?”

            “Stupid.”

            “What am I supposed to do? You know 500,000 cars get stolen every year in the US? How many of those are caught? Certainly not 500,000.”

            “Well, with your presence so prominent right now, the police are surely looking out for you. How they haven’t found you yet is beyond me! They’ve got your name, your face… Everything.”

            I look back out the window at the parade.

            “Esme,” I say, adopting an offensive smear of the romantic language’s intonation, “I may just have to wait here until my time is up.”

            “Well, that’s a logical way to think. And your one-day mid-life crisis ends.”

            “I’m not that old,” I say, and he rolls on his back and hits my chest with his curled fist, eyebrows hitched. I mimic the expression. “What?”

            “You can’t go in character and then go out of character!”

            “Well, how old is Dante?”

            Rolling his eyes, bee-sting irritation lines his tone and he goes, “He’s sixty. I told you that.”

            “You did not.”

            “I did. In the car, when I was telling you Esme Blanchet’s story.”

            “Oh, right,” the older man crying as he cupped Esme’s clammy hand as life seeped from him in rotten milk breaths. “That’s who I’m playing? That’s past mid-life.”

            “Shut up!” he says, pushing my chest again.

            “So, I stay here until they catch me with my cock in your ass.”

            “How boring. I want to be at the sea.”

            “Police readers identify license plates. There doesn’t even need to be an attentive eye. I don’t think driving to the Gulf of Mexico is plausible.”

            “ _Think_ and _dream_ are the same word in French. Besides, have you ever considered the _bus_?”

            “I’ve never even… been on one before.”

            “No wonder your life was so dull. That says everything I need to know about your routine desolation.” He taps a finger on his chin. “It never had to be this drastic. We could’ve gone on a sweet vacation via Greyhound.”

            “And return to the cyclical life I used to lead, boxed in with the shit-smear I roomed with? Fuck no. This is a be-all, end-all measure, Felix. Don’t get that wrong. I’m not looking for temporary relaxation. The limits I can push now are immeasurable, and the human is capable of doing it. Anyone can do what I do if they’re not bound by societal limitations. I’m in my natural state now, man, killing and humping.”

            “Then why wait in another box? You’re being controlled by societal limitation right now,” he says.

            “Well, got-damn.”

            We get our stuff together in a room-service garbage bag and swing it in the backseat, Felix dressed once more in his cords and chilly white shirt still damp from yesterday’s sweat, giving off the smell of youth and skin, blistered feet uncovered yet. He props them on the dashboard and stinks in the car peacefully, cradling the dysfunctional shotgun, windows cracked so he can breathe the summer stench of exhaust and parade bodies.

            At seven I depart from Shitville, Texas with the casualness of any driver making his way home, and a single text to Thomas:

            _How do u feel about beach sex?_

*

            Spanish moss that usually swings droops listlessly from the twisted branches of an ancient oak, ivy crawling up the thick trunk. The moss is grey and wiry and glows in the sunlight and Felix stands on the tip-toes of his new Walmart brand sneakers and wraps a hand around it, wincing and sucking his palm into his mouth immediately after.

            “Thought it was softer,” he mumbles, studying the chain-link plant curiously.

            I ignore him and continue crouching at the front of the car, turning the Phillips screwdriver in the screws that blink in the white light. The license plate clatters to the ground, _TEXAS_ and the number rattling hollowly on the patch of grass flattened by the tires. I crouch-scoot over to the adjacent car and unscrew the front and back licenses too.

            Mr. Brown Sedan and Mrs. Green Truck are exchanging numbers—front and back. I carefully screw them on, latex gloves over my hands, just in case. They snap stickily on the screws and Felix mumbles, “My ass hurts,” as I continue the mindless, practical procedure. _I should be a handyman_ , I think.  Unfolding from my crouch, I look between the two Texas plates and see no discernible difference save for the numbers and letters. We’ve chosen the same design of a simple black background and a stark white star. “Lone Star State” font is placed beneath the number. And that’s on both ends.

            And who’s _that_ observant of their license plate number, really? The owner won’t notice, will she? We’re standing across a dirt road that partitions us a few feet away from some sad pawn shop that has an attached “café,” which is really just a coffee machine and a collection of Little Debbie’s fruit pies set in front of a fold-out table, fly-paper flickering and spotted in the rattling air conditioner’s way. Unfolding from my crouch, I sip the watery coffee I bought from the café and look at my work, rotating around the truck a few times before nodding.

            “Looks good.”

            Felix continues to nurse his palm with his lips.

            I say, “You know people pay the DMV to do this? Up to two-hundred bucks! Costs a Jew’s eye. Man… that was really illegal of me.”

            “You killed someone.”

            “Well, you know. That’s more of an ethical matter. This is more technical.” Pleased with myself, I jerk the car door open and nod him in, but he whines, high-pitched and childish.

            “My legs are really cramped from being in there. I’m getting secretary spread.”

            “Oh, please, you’re tiny.”

            “Not for long.”

            “Get in, Felix.”

            But he’s jogging across the road and pressing his face to the window of the pawn shop, even going as far to exaggeratedly frame his face with the sides of his hands, peering in with wide eyes. I follow him closely in case he decides to enter the place and introduce himself as Kidnapped Child. “They’re selling a Derringer in there.”

            “How the fuck do you know what a Derringer is?”

            “Because I’m from Texas,” he says in a barbecue-spread accent far too familiar to Bonnie’s, “You should get it, seeing as the shotgun doesn’t work.”

            “It’s just unloaded, it’s not broken. Besides, what am I gonna do with a Derringer? Give someone a scraped elbow?”

            “Then get some bullets for the shotgun,” he maintains the accent, and turns to me with his thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his new jeans.

            I scrub my hand over my face and squeeze my eyes shut tight. “What, are you eager to kill now? I don’t plan on doing anymore.”

            Dropping his hands, he advances towards me with a tilted head, brows knitted. “What?”

            “Well, shit, don’t look so disappointed.” I hook my hand under his arm and lead him back to the hot stage of adjusted cars parked beneath the overgrown tree.

            “What about Thomas?”

            “Look, I already have shit on my tail. Now, we just need to get out of here.”

            Felix’s face looks grim, eyes turned up and head tilted down, red bottom lip pouted and then he enters the car, slamming the door hard. I get in with him and we turn back onto the dirt road that’s now dusted my car with a caked layer of brown sugar.

            Crooning ambiguous country interlaced with static and interspersed by pulled pork and motorboat ads fills the silence. Felix’s discontent is palpable in his narrowed eyes and deep frown.

            “What is it?” I ask, eyeing him momentarily before studying the road once more. There’s nothing as tense as knowing someone you love is upset with you.

            “Nothing,” he says, very much meaning something with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. How far we’ve come from our daydream in-character sex.

            “Tell me.”

            He slaps his hand on his thigh and says, “I don’t get why you’re such a hypocrite. You’re always talking about how humans are capable of anything, and we’re to break out of this goldfish bowl of expectation, and cruelty is natural, and all this De Sade-ish bullshit, and now that your dick is sated you’re calm again? You don’t want to kill the fucker that murdered your cat, the only thing you cared about? You’re so fucking average, man. It’s like the end of _Office Space_ in here. ‘I found love, so now I’m happy with my mediocre-ass life.’”

            I tighten my lips. “That’s not it. I’m just thinking logically.”

            “Logic applies only to those constricted by societal bounds, I thought?”

            “No, logic applies to those who don’t want to die.”

            “Since when do you not want to die?”

            Skinny bastard is right. So what if I’ve lowered my blood pressure with a good dose of cum deposits?

            “I get it,” Felix whispers, “The key to all of this was less extreme than you would’ve liked it. The whole goal was just to fuck me, right? But you just didn’t want to go into work. Our maybe you just didn’t want the chance of rejection.”

            “No,” I murmur.

            “Surely that’s the case,” he studies his moss-bitten hand nonchalantly, “If you’re going to change your initial goal—killing Thomas—just because you had a good orgasm, then you’re as average as any man! Jesus Christ! Just because you got laid you’re going to give up? What’s the finality of all of this anyway? You’ve kidnapped someone, you’ve killed someone, you’re on the run, and you’re going to be on the run your whole life until you die or get arrested, and even though the devil doesn’t care for made-up laws, you’re not the devil! This isn’t an uninhabited island where man roams free like nature does and morals dissipate.”

            He jerks open the glove box and grabs my copy of _Lord of the Flies_ , placing it on the dashboard and pointing at it, “You don’t get away with it in the end, [my name.] You don’t. At this point, you’re fucked. You know that, _logically_. At this point in time your clock is ticking in one way or another. So why not go all out? Why not stretch those human limits while you can before it all goes to shit?”

            “No one’s going to find out about Bonnie! We will get out of this!”

            “Then if that’s the case, who’s to say anyone will find out about Thomas? Certainly he’s more deserving of the hand of death than Bonnie was. Oh, perhaps you have a conscience now. It’s _bad_ , is that the case?”

            A diversion: “Letting him live is a punishment, too. His life is so pathetic. You heard the phone call, didn’t you? He’s already attempted suicide. Let him do it himself and fail. Let him live in his own wretched shell of horror.”

            “Like you were?”

            “Exactly.”

            “And now you’re not, huh?’

            “No.”

            “Why?”

            “Because,” I grip the wheel tightly, “I don’t feel so wretched with you.”

            “Christ, man, I’m like your mail-order bride, except you committed theft of services.”

            It hurts, honestly, and I study the windshield.

            “So, then,” I continue, tapping my nails against the steering wheel, “What’s with your obsession on killing him? He can’t have done anything to upset you. If you’re really so dedicated to me fulfilling this self-appointed quota, then you’ve got to maintain an inch of concern for me, don’t you?”

            He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms behind his head, interlacing them as casually as he had in my fantasies just the day before, when he was tied and trembling in the backseat, face green and concern glazing his eyes with the shimmery fear of a punished child under the head of his abusive father, and all I wanted was for him to fall into comfort.

            “Perhaps I’m just a fucked up kid who’s now dreamt of nothing but the disposal of Bonnie’s body. My, you’re such a creative soul.”

            I stare at him entirely now, speeding along at 75 on a 60. My skin pinpricks at the comment.

            “Perhaps I’m enamored with our disdain toward humanity. This isn’t just about you, you know. Math: permutations and combinations—hell on fuckin’ earth.”

            “What?”

            “English—oh, yes, I can list Ralph,” he pushes the book with his toe, “and Humbert,” and he pushes my arm next, “But shall I read about these lives instead of live them? History—logical connections, don’t repeat it. But what if I like the past? What if I like the bad things that happened?”

            “Stop being so cryptic.”

            “School is hell and I have no desire to return. My god, you should see my fellow students without profound thoughts, shells of humans walking around drained of personage. All they talk about is the Internet when they’re not on it, you know. It’s very sad.”

            “What the fuck does this have to do with murder?”

            “You think I want to be like them? I mean, there _was_ a cool fourteen-year-old _once_. You said so yourself. And she was a killer.”

            Starkweather and Fugate. I should’ve never planted the idea in the little maniac’s head. My heart pounds against my chest and I shake my head.

            “You’re so lucky,” he sighs, toeing his sneakers off and rubbing my crotch with his clean-socked foot. Unclicking his seatbelt (we both wear them despite our commentary on freedom in all manners) he leans against the door as he had that decade ago when he was issuing the story of Esme Blanchet. “That thrill of just holding the shotgun to your head was enough to get me high. I can only imagine how powerful you felt cracking the bones of that ugly girl under your boot. If you’d let me, I’d clean the blood.”

            “Felix…” I pant, hand atop his foot, tense with either intention to push it off and hump into the arch.

            “My name is Caril,” he says.

            I jerk my head to him.

            “Charlie,” he coos, “Can’t we kill Thomas? Can’t we, oh please? What have we to lose? Hasn’t humanity spited us enough? Like you were saying in the room, life will go on without him.”

            Another fantasy of his. Is that all it is?

            Human life an element in his game. How sick.

            (Oh, fuck off, I know I’m a hypocrite. But I have a larger purpose.)

            “This isn’t funny, Felix.”

            “Caril.”

            “Listen to me. You’re playing with real, human life.”

            “Like you haven’t. Christ, when did you get so _boring_? When did you adopt morals? Where did this come from? Why do you care about Thomas’s life? Hasn’t he also played with ‘real’ life? Christ, that cat was one of the only undeserving things of death in the world. Incapable of making dumb decisions, it never would. It was only there to be gentle and beautiful. A talisman.”

            I nod sharply, accepting of this elegant explanation.

            “I don’t know. I get you, I do. This is self-preservation, not morality. I don’t care for Thomas’s wellbeing. But seeing all those cops really fucked with me. The potential of getting caught is very real.”

            “Limitations, limitations.”

            “They’re self-imposed.”

            “I’d understand that if they were self-imposed if it was your mother or something, but Thomas was your goal. Now, listen, would you rather have an imperfect fulfillment of something you’ve set, or no fulfillment at all?”

            I look at him and hold his hand. “You’ve fulfilled me.”

            He rolls his eyes and jerks his hand away, “What if I leave you?”

            “Why would you?”

            “Because I’d never like to be tied down by someone so boring he can’t even _kill_. Now, I know you’ve never considered what I’ve wanted seeing as you’ve only taken, but I just _told_ you what I want, and I insist. Consequences will arise. You think you’re allowed to be average now? You think I’ll take your satisfaction in stride as though I’m a limb connected to you? Hell no.”

            The car transforms: we’re a black and white newspaper snippet, his hair curled back, mine once again existent and slicked with grease, pushed off my head in a pompadour. He smokes a cigarette with sharp nails, buffed red, even though color is moot. I have blood speckled on my shirt, the same color as his nails, one wrist bound not with a watch but handcuffs rusted and swinging. Both donned in heavy denim jackets, the desolate rolling hills of Nebraska bracketing our sides, we take turns exhaling plumes of smoke out the cracked windows, the air aromatic of manure and pasture. Haystacks and cows dot the fields.

            “You’re right, Caril,” and though I’ve no idea how Starkweather sounds, I reckon that in his desperation to mimic James Dean, he has the classic American accent, golden Hollywood voice that makes those girls in poodle skirts melt. “Ain’t cats damned cute?”

            “Sure they are,” he coos, overtly-feminine, and I don’t think he’s even seen them, but he brushes back his gold curls as though they’re black and wrapped in rollers. “Fuck, Charlie. Anyone who hurts a little kitten deserves to be hurt himself.”

            I check the phone, but it does not shatter our grayscale printing. It is simply an added element to the 1957 landscape, as natural as a Coca-Cola bottle or a slice of apple pie, a baseball card.

            “Did Tommy-boy respond?” I hand him the phone.

            “Nothing but a question mark, kitten.”

            A chilling petname, and surely a petname at that.

            “Bait him.”

            “To where?”

            “Galveston. Oh, Galveston. I still hear your seawinds blowing…”

            “Now, that’s an inconvenient detour.”

            “Fine, then,” says I, “Lake Conroe will do.”

            All signs have been pointing waterside. Ever since Thomas pushed the cat’s small head in the clinical and polished toilet bowl—or perhaps even when Felix and I first laid eyes upon each other at the pool colored an artificial blue. Esme and Dante long for the sea and it is a proper depositing place for the unremarkable, for they’ll not be buried and marked with indelible immortality in name.

            They’ll rot and shed skin cells, flaking into just another skeleton, as ambiguous as Titanic attendees, pirates, only bone decay evident of the year they died. He will be as insignificant as every person who has ever lived before us, from the day the sea swallowed its first man.

*

            The Unexciting Downfall of Thomas Crawford begins with a dirty trip to the lake where moonlight shines over the clinquant water, and with such hot stillness, the lake is morphed into a guise of black glass. Standing at any point grants a view of the opposite horizon, which seemed inconvenient enough, but it doesn’t matter now, because I’m tying the wrists of the body to Walmart’s multipurpose rope. The pale corpse of Thomas Crawford really has lovely wrists—notably more so than even Esme’s, which both glow in the moonlight.

            My roommate sinks in the water as simply as a stone, because he’s weighed down by cinderblocks retrieved at the construction site for an office building down the road to Lake Conroe, which were affixed to the other end of the rope. Felix bends over the side of the kayak to count bubbles before they stop.

            No dramatic altercation preceded the exchange of dealer and sacrifice of death when he stood atop the pier, facing the water, awaiting his friend and lover. I kindly informed him from behind that she was dead, and he turned around to study me with lack of surprise, or perhaps shock that froze his features.

            His glasses whited out his eyes in censored, light blobs as they absorbed the moonshine. His head tilted down to calmly face the barrel of the raised shotgun and I didn’t feel very manly at all holding it, and he said, “So am I next?”

            Silencers are not as the name suggests. It muffled the noise of the gunshot to emulate a door slamming hard and loud, but no nighttime fisherman of a hot Sunday night would be alerted unless within the vicinity, only the rattling of birds fleeing showed any response to the noise, a hurricane of flittering wings from the tree-line that silhouetted that big globe in the cloudless sky momentarily, spraying black feathers and leaves. He flopped and leaked onto the pier that was carefully attended to with saltwater and the raining Johnson’s baby wipes postmortem.

            No more tears.

            Felix laughed and clapped in glee, but I stood there over Thomas and I thought very strongly that I’d just given him what he’d always wanted.

            And so sinks Thomas Crawford, unexciting in his life and more so in his death. As drugs could not make him interesting even in the effects of their heady unreality, nor could murder.


	17. Americana

            Self-preservation is my main concern and while I am independent in this—as the term insists—other factors benefit me greatly sometimes, because God loves his good children like me. I made straight A’s my entire school career, you know.

            “ _Mmmm, mmm, mmmmm, mmm_ ,” hums a euphoric Esme, cheek smooshed against the Louisianan stained glass, our first luxury hotel four days after the murder of Thomas. A kaleidoscope of colors splays over his face, and his teeth turn red in the sun’s cast through a woman’s open mouth, kneeling with hands clasped in prayer, head tossed back in cowering reverence.

            Our television has no local news so I’ve been uninformed on the search for the missing Felix Broad, and manhunt for me, but a new Texan tragedy is a wildfire in the forest of my misdoings.

            “ _Mmm, mmm-MM-mm, mmm_ …”

            “Shut up,” I mumble around a honey stick, pushing the sugar further up through the plastic tube. “You’re so annoying.”

            Esme continues, turning on his back and sliding down the glass to sit on the floor, “ _Mmm… mmm-mm, mmm_ …”

            Grabbing the remote, I chew on the plastic and turn the volume up so the cries of students spilling out of East Bridge High School amplifies over Esme’s godawful melody. A sweating girl with mascara rolling down her cheeks in chalky waves speaks to a reporter in a pleading tone: “I don’t—I don’t even, like, know what went down… Oh my god… We saw everyone running. I was in my chem class, and like… This stampede ensued, and it just completely vibrated the floor. I was in the room and I peeked out the door window, and I saw this chick advancing casually, and I knew exactly what was happening. Our teacher shooed us away from the door and into this back room, where they keep all the lab stuff, and locked the door. I was so scared. We were all shaking, under beakers… This whole wave of paranoia swept over us… The girl was gone but we were all in silence, strung tight with this urge to just cry. I started crying and I tried to keep it silent but I couldn’t…”

            “And the perpetrator, did you know her?”

            “No, I’ve never seen her before. I think she’s a senior.”

            The chick has bedazzled cherries on her shirt, over her breasts, and a cursive scrawl that says “Sweet!” beneath the fruit. I love her, I think.

            The death count has yet to be revealed. The female perp is an oddity in the modern culture of school shooters—nowadays, school shootings usually don’t even make TV. The newspapers provide a headline or two at most, maybe an article or two online in an attempt to suck some phenomenon pandering out of the citizens of the town.

            But now this young woman has granted me a diversion, and though I’m totally not an advocate for child murder, I blow her a kiss for my own sake, as I think we’re dedicated to some sort of kinship now.

            Turning off the television, my anger dissipates and I swing my legs off the bed to heft Felix off the ground. He shrieks like an excited animal and kicks wildly before slipping his legs about my waist. I secure one arm around his and we both extend our arms to clutch our hands together and waltz gleefully around the room. I do the footwork, as he laughs with his head thrown back, eyes creased, providing the music.

            “What _is_ that awful noise?”

            “Awful?” he grins, hands notched in my hair, “It’s nothing at all. It’s just something I’ve made, you know. I hum wonderfully. Speak of awful: you’re the one dancing over mass murder.”

            “You know I’m not celebrating it.”

            “You’re relieved!”

            I kiss him wetly on the curve of his pale cheek, “What a lovely diversion tactic. There’s someone even worse than me. There is a god.”

            “No there isn’t. There’s nothing good in this, you know—just levels of badness and less bad.”

*

            I suppose now the reader dislikes us both if she maintains any sense of morality in the fibre of her being, and sees us not as fetishization material but humans. But we have man disguises to mar the grossness we exude upon the innocent and the pure, to pay recompense for our nasty reality.

            For your benefit, of course.

            Of course, there is Esme and Dante, who spend their time mostly striking dramatic poses, facing the window, musing on the prospect of what’s to come. Philosophers of the modern age, they spend their time musing over what to do with life in life, as though they’re gods offered the chance at mortality and weighing if it shall be as boring as sitting in a perfect heaven of nothingness.

            Caril and Charlie only apply in cars, in which Hollywood casts us in monochrome and we smoke cigarettes, Camels—which we’ve both taken up solely for the practice of this fantasy. We both have coughing fits in every inhale that we both respectfully ignore.

            _White Sands_ is our newest creation, which we practiced at dinner and convinced our waiter of, giggling around spoonfuls of cold summer borscht served—strangely enough—at a Cajun restaurant. A harmonizing duo of two white supremacists in two wildly different senses, _White Sands_ had the noise of the Beach Boys and the ideology of neo-Nazis. Neither of us can sing but we aren’t planning on releasing an album anyway, because our first LP did so well. I am the American—Jackson Thomason—from Mississippi. The south will rise again, says he, touting a Confederate flag on his back in shitty ink. He is the Aryan of unspecific origins, his accent a German one hit with an Eastern European bomb. We met in a gay bar, under the pretext of a skinhead fetish, and—

            What?

            This doesn’t make us more likable?

            Oh, yes, the morbid minds of us wicked children don’t create an appealing fairytale, but we are in love, we are, and while we play our games, I know his admiration is for me and not my characters.

            Our food becomes more and more decadent, and we pig out in bed, wiping cheese cream frosting off our lips, drizzling generous amounts of honey over smoked ham, pouring champagne and spilling it with not a blink. We sprinkle sugar over sliced raw persimmons and pick pomegranate seeds with our thumbs, though they’re not in season, and it bleeds pink into our skin and the white sheets. We pick rose petals and paint the petals them with egg whites, rolling them in sugar, but they taste awful and we decide not to live off the land. We use our thumbs to spread brie over apple slices, and we slurp raw oysters as aphrodisiacs before kissing each other with the taste of spoiled fish on our tongues, which makes it feel like we’re sucks the ocean out of each other.

            Felix collects an array of soaps and smelling oils, and takes his hour-long baths in solitude until he finally invites me into the steam and we have lazy bath sex of humidity and humility, my long legs spread over him, knees bracketing the porcelain tub until they bloom purple, my thighs warm and red from their half submergence in the water that he’s dumped far too much Epsom salt in. Like inhaling paint, the scent of lavender is head-pounding and intoxicating, and I bend down to bite his neck with a laugh.

            When we’re not fucking or demanding room service or playing made-up games, we muse on my actions, and Felix tends to brush his thumb over my eyebrows that have since grown back in light as downy rabbit fur. With the rotating strokes, we talk of purpose, and we’ve decided that it’s pointless, what I’ve done, but everything is anyway.

            “Murder can be erotic,” says Felix, eyes turned heavenward.

            “Okay, Ted Bundy.”

            “I’m serious. I see no problem with what you’ve done. How many people are slain for love in the long run, anyway? Only recently—and I mean 1492 recently—has it been so reprehensible that it’s cringe-inducing.”

            “I love the way you talk.”

            “Murder is an ancient art—and it is sometimes necessary for the living. Now, in your case, perhaps not. But on a mythological standpoint, I’m sure you’ll be hailed with the devotion of a martyr by some future century. Like Bonnie and Clyde, or Dracula.”

            “What makes my killing classier than any other hick fuck who shoots his wife because she’s discovered his affair? That’s murder for love, isn’t it?”

            He props himself up to look down on me with hitched brows and a smile, charmed in his confusion. “I don’t know. Because you’re handsome?”

            Midday—72 hours after both the murders, in which the cases are classified cold and the kidnapping too—and Felix undergoes cabin fever in the luxury hotel in Mobile, Alabama.

            Stripped and peering out at the pool, he turns on his heel and awakens me from a half-dozed nap in which I watched his frame pace past the floor-to-ceiling windows, floating on the floor, whiteness from the unforgiving summer day inching past his silhouette in its angelic smear to blur his skinny frame.

            Shaking my shoulder, he bends down over me and he insists: “Oh, let me swim.”

            I rub an eye free of exhaustion and prop myself up on my elbow, the mattress sinking below my weight, hand landing in blackberry jam smeared on an unfinished piece of toast. “I don’t know.”

            “Oh, please.”

            Paranoia ever-present even in this Eden: “It’s directly across from the highway. Eyes everywhere.”

            “I’m withering away—soon I’ll be so translucent an anatomy professor could use me as an example. I’m a biological atrocity. Plus, I’m undoubtedly anemic at this point.”

            I pull the blankets back and he slides into them, cherubic in his nudity. He presses a skeleton’s hand to my cheek, and yes indeed, that sure is white. I tie my fingers in his and kiss the salty sweat of his palms with a worshiping whisper into the folds of it— “If that’s what you want.”

            I’ve killed for the boy. Surely I can let him swim.

            Running my fingers through his hair, I wonder vaguely how his presence has swept the state. If he was a girl, surely he’d get as much media attention of JonBenet Ramsey, but even so, he’s a modern day Tadzio. There are definitive features on his face that are undoubtedly unforgettable, and any appreciator of beauty would pick up on these facets with a second look.

            “It is,” he says, monotonous.

            “Then you can.”

            I tousle his curls and watch the strands glitter pure as wheat in the sunlight. It is such a defining feature of his—and it must be destroyed.

            After much convincing and a few shed tears and, finally, an apathetic shrug and study of his nails pink stained nails, Felix’s hair is washed and limp and painted over in dye seemingly made by the same creators of Expo markers, his eyebrows dabbed carefully and unprofessionally.

            The box says “Asian Blue” which seems a little fucked up, but hell, we’re in Largely-Christian, largely-black southern America. There are few of the labeled nationality to offend with this shitty advertising. Why I picked it, I have no idea. Perhaps for the absurdist nature of it. That certainly fits in with the plans we have carried out.

            When it’s done, he seems more intelligent, but I miss my angelic child, less angelic and more caravagesque. He seems grown, in a way, and I’ve never noticed the sharp slope of his nose, always defining it as ‘pert.’ With his light freckles and straightened hair, eyes green, he becomes an anomaly of nature’s designated traits. In fact, it’s so unbelievably real that one could only assume praises of Marilyn Manson may ring through his throat, dedication to Trent Reznor and Edgar Allen Poe running through his veins, which hold blood the color of wine, or some such metaphor deep and ripe with gothic intonation.

            So, I’ve desecrated him.

            So, he’s my own now.

*

            On the third day by the pool, the Fourth of July, in which Felix has adopted a deep tan and sun and chlorine has bleached his hair with amber highlights that flutter red, I first see the hitman.

            Now you may have long since diagnosed me as clinically ill, and while I recognize the paranoia is extraneous, the fact of the matter is that the belief that the cowboy across from me wants to kill me has steeled itself into my mind and there is no way to shake it. So I sit up in my beach chair and very inconspicuously yell:

            “ _Holy fucking shit_!”

            Felix has turned away from his friend that he’s made—children are always so keen to befriend strangers, undeniable trust weaving a sense of camaraderie between them—and stares at me. He wades through the artificial water and rests his arms on the end of the pool, watching me.

            But my eyes are not on him for once, and though I’ve attracted the attention of the rest of the poolgoers, I’m still studying the cowboy, his thumbs hooked in the belt loop of his tight jeans, brown shirt hugging the strong muscles of his arms undeniably tight with capability. Grabbing my towel, I throw it quickly over my shoulder.

            The dude has a fucking _gun_ strapped to his leg. In this day and age, the Open Carry Act has become increasingly prevalent among the south as death tolls in mass shootings rise. If there are guns we must protect ourselves—you know, by distributing guns.

            But that’s a liberal argument for another time in some political science college class. No wonder Leonard has gotten away with his illegal gun distribution for so long. You remember him, don’t you? I do. My good old friend Leonard, the pinball wizard.

            Heart pounding in my head, I basically sprint into the hotel, in which a concierge greets me, and I spit a, “Fuck you, bro, I’m about to die.” And I know how poisonous that is, the girl probably wants to die just as much as I had pre-abduction, but remorse isn’t necessarily a prominent aspect of my personality.

            Locking myself in a bathroom stall with cubicles of toilets, ceiling to floor dividers that make it very inconvenient for someone starved of toilet paper, I curl up on the closed seat and pant out my anxiety, hands rested upon my knees. This is how _Sweet!_ girl felt when she was shaking in the biology lab, I’m sure.

            Can you imagine it?

            Directing your line of sight up from your peaceful diversion from the cruelty you’ve surrounded yourself with to land on a face of such icy hatred—narrowed, judgmental eyes, wicked slants that judge violently. It’s a fucking nightmare.

            My heart bursts and the cloth of my Hawaiian shirt slicks wetly at the armpits, dying it a shade bluer. The cool rattling of the air conditioned incites goosebumps in contrast to my heated body, a feverish combination of insufferable, tightening pains. A sunburn on my head blooms hellishly while my body wracks with shivers.

            Dear god, I’m fucked.

            I sit there trembling on the toilet with my legs drawn to my chest, all absorbed in self-preservation when I realize dimly that Felix is still out in the open, susceptible to being saved.

            In my mind I craft the situation:

            Returning to the pool, and finding not only my pursuer gone, but my pursued. The remnants of chlorinated water on Felix’s neon towel printed with smiling seahorses, the last shreds of his body heat emanating from the cloth. The cowboy’s intentions not being to off me but to run me off in order to capture the beauty I so rightfully chose for himself. And then what? I’ll get in my car and hunt after the fucker, and it’d be a singular manhunt, no police help, because I’m hunted myself. And it wouldn’t be nearly as easy as undergoing Thomas’s demise—a wet firecracker, that. I’d probably never find him, the child gone from me, kneeling in the basement of a suburban home in an eerily silent neighborhood, blood caking rotting wood, rusted chains and bodily fluid stink rising from the foundation of the home, ignored by neighbors because of Refreshing Peppermint Febreeze. Man, I’d be pissed if my beloved was stolen from me by some hot jerk.

            Sympathy bleeds within me for Brian and Jennifer.

            Even in theory, I feel an overwhelming shred of remorse, and somehow a strange second view of myself, cowering in a luxury hotel bathroom, two murders under my skin, fearful of some cowboy, my loved one abandoned as I shake without explanation. It’s pathetic.

            For the first time in a long time I cry into my reddened knees, two sun-kissed roses.

            In an alternate universe I’m not such a bad person.

            In an alternate universe I exist in the grinding routine of domestic life.

*

            “ _What_ cowboy?” demands Felix, gathering his small collection of Walmart clothes. In his AC/DC shirt with his newly-dyed black hair, he looks like myself when I was his age, save for the angelic aspects of his face and the Greek figure. He’s never listened to AC/DC. (He’s also never listened to Billy Idol, I made that shit up in place of the awkward ass silence we maintained the day the first kiss ensued. We’d had our hands clasped between our knees and eyes pointedly ignoring each other on the television, fake chuckling at the lowest common denominator of humor: ‘witty’ commercials.)

            “The fucking cowboy!” I shriek, my voice climbing a few octaves as I gesticulate wildly. “You didn’t see the _actual_ old school cowboy staring at me with his face half-obscured in a bandanna?”

            “No,” Esme says, tiredly.

            “We need to leave,” I reiterate, the fifth or sixth time.

            Pointedly frowning at the bed, Felix picks up cherries that have rolled beneath the sheets and sucks the meat of it into his mouth, spitting out a seed onto the wrinkled notes of our morning tousling. “There was no cowboy—and even if there was, why would that scare you?”

            “There was, and he was watching me!”

            “So? I watch you,” he smirks.

            I do not recapitulate the present situation.

            “Besides,” I whisper, tucking the remains of our chopped persimmons dusted with sugar into my jaw as he scrounges for the final cherries, “Staying here is moot. We’re getting fat. Luxury is far too excessive.”

            “Ha! Look at you,” sneers Felix, throwing the pit at my temple, his saliva impacting me more than the seed in its familiarity, its scent as familiar to me as my own skin, “’Humans are capable of all things if only he attempts to commit it. But limit yourself in case you get _gre-edy_!’”

            “We’re surrounded by people,” I mutter.

            “So?”

            “There’s nothing I hate more.”

            “Good god, could you sound anymore emo?”

            Craning my neck back, I stare pointedly at the ceiling and breathe in the air of our meals and soaps, our bodily fluids and the summer stench, spit and cum, artificial flowers, sickly wine, the stale lingering of cigarette smoke sinking into our clothes.

            Insufferable familiarity bleeds from the walls, and I long to be away, away, away from people and the things they create.

            “I get it, you’re a misanthropist,” he murmurs, zipping the duffel bag with enough violence to tear it from its home. He cusses and flings it as he had the cherry pit—in my direction.

            A headache thunders behind my eye. I am losing control. Tears needle at my pupils undoubtedly blown, bleeding into my irises like oil. Just days ago my love was maintaining silence in his fear, bruises a makeshift choker about his swan’s neck.

            I’ve given him the leeway to breed contempt in his shitty attitude. It is the key to shit parenting: origins derive solely from their tendency to spoil, to grant a child all he desires.

            “Knock it off,” I mumble.

            “I liked it here,” he says.

            “All we did was the same shit we did at home.”

            “Not including school and work! We had fun, didn’t we?”

            “There is nothing here,” I say, approaching him, “That the apartment couldn’t grant us. It is eating my budget and it’s eating my willpower not to launch nuclear attack upon the luxurious and giddily optimistic idiots circling in their uninteresting wealth, expending the cash they’re so proud of on things everyone else is.”

            He sucks his lips into his mouth and slants his eyes.

            “I do not want to be like everyone else.”

            “Aren’t you—consciously avoiding being like everyone else—designating yourself to the group of romantics desperate not to be like everyone else. And they’re all like each other?”

            “Interesting paradox, but I’d rather fall into that category than the dumb-ass happy American family, or in our case, cheery newlyweds without conscious awareness of their inevitable downfall and eventual dislike for each other.”

            “Pah,” grunts Felix, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “Desperate to be different, aren’t you?”

            Advancing, I grab his chin in a grip reminiscent of the night I wrapped my hands around his throat, “I wouldn’t want to have to hurt you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've hit a roadblock.
> 
> ...Hm.
> 
> Edit: HOW CAN THERE BE A SCHOOL SHOOTING IN SUMMER FUCK I'M SO STUPID LOL


	18. A Shopping Cart Full of Rubber Ducks

I'm the man in the box  
Buried in my shit.

—"Man in the Box"  
Alice in Chains

* * *

 

            Man is dense.

            Annoyance, in me, starts in the ass-cheeks. I clench them furiously when I’m angry, as though it’ll ease tension. I know some people curl their fists, but something satisfying lies in the muscles of your glutes burning, that sear crawling into your thighs, your toes curling inside your boots, sphincter shutting.

            It hurts when I sit down in the driver’s seat.

            Or rather, _men_ are dense, in case you choose to skew my words into Universal Man because of that Coleridge poem. After all, you don’t see women doing shit like this. Do you? I don’t.

            Men tend to overshoot their tolerance when it comes to beauty. As if it’s really worth it to sit through the monotonous quirks of something you find cute. Felix’s contradictions on my ideology are only so intriguing after the fifteenth argument of the day. And his tendency to kick my cheek in the car and play intolerable indie music on the radio (this folksy wailing noise of heartbroken girls), is truly taking its toll.

            I understand how kidnappers abuse their victims into the perfect form—that being submissive. See, initially I believed that the tendency for abductors to tie and immobilize their victims was excessive and ridiculous, a show of complete insecurity. They could’ve just stolen a mannequin, and with a little creative ingenuity with a Pringles can and raw meat, truly had something they cared for. Now, I kind of get it.

            Not that I’m going to go out of my way to threaten and beat Felix, or put him in a coffin beneath a bed until my dick itches, or use fear tactics to control him. No, no. I’m going to do what I’ve always done when something I like begins to annoy me—nothing at all.

            With Sylvester, his childishness eats into my brain, his idiotic outbursts and disgusting tendencies lick fury into my veins, and I let it happen in silence. I boil inside, and I’d retreat to my car to rant it out on the phone with my mother, or scribble furiously in my journal after every post-coitus visit. Everyone always assumed I was so peaceful, as though my violence inside would never brim overboard and come to a head.

            As if all their intolerable tendencies would go unpunished.

            This did not apply to Thomas, who I never liked, who I never intended to make like me, and who, in the end, I now see is the least obnoxious of all. Yes, his tears served their inane purpose of self-pity, but isn’t self-pity just narcissism, or excessive self-care? And yes, his nasty fascination with dead animals was sickening in its toxic aroma, but its intent wasn’t to hurt, nor garner anything from anyone.

            Then again, neither is Sylvester’s fascination with Family Feud, nor Esme’s taste in music.

            My god, have I surrounded myself with idiots? And I thought I had good taste. Or is everyone just stupid?

            A warm rain singes the skin of my arm that’s thrown out the window, twirling an unlit cigarette in my fingers, the rolling paper dampening and going limp. Peeling it open at the seam, I then unroll it with my finger and let the tobacco flutter out as its ash would, the brown plant catching under my overgrown thumbnail.

            Sun still filters through leaves in splotches as rain patters my windshield, a phenomenon exclusive to places near the equator. “The devil’s beatin’ his wife,” I say, discarding the cigarette.

            “What?”

            I roll the window up, as the side of my shirt is thoroughly battered and wet, and it clings to my ribs. “I’d like to return to my mother, I think.”

            When Felix looks at me, I drag my nail over the peeling skin of a sunburn over his cheeks. White curdles flake off, leaving a smooth pink beneath. Heat emanates from his cheeks. “Where does she live?”

            “Florida.”

            “Don’t you think cops are squatting there in wait for you?”

            In the mirror, he watches himself, peeling his dead skin off and pushing his dyed hair out of his face, distracted. Tucking my lip beneath my teeth, I feel awful to inform him that by now, everyone but direct family has moved on from the kidnapping. Fleeting sensationalism of our kidnapping in the media has had its fill, and whoever controls the media controls the mind.

            Oh, yes, the police are certainly still on it, but after the East Bridge shooting in El Paso, no one gives a rat’s ass about the pretty stolen boy—only his parents and the hitman, probably. The FBI will let it go cold and continue prowling the Internet for child pornography distributers.

            “I miss my mother,” I explain, “and I’m sure they’re not actively harassing her at this stage.”

            “What do you mean ‘at this stage?’”

            “You’ve become old news, kid,” I admit with a quiet exhalation. “Until new clues arise—shocking and appalling—no one is going to care.”

            “And clues include, what, a rotting corpse of a transvestite, smeared in peanut butter and left in the woods?”

            “They’re not going to find her! I covered her in peanut butter!”

            Setting his chin upon his fist, he redirects his sight from the mirror to the window, windshield wipers shucking away hot tears of the sky that splatter over the glass, and he licks his packed teeth with his tongue.

            “And Thomas?”

            “Years before anyone’s even looking.”

            “It isn’t a cold case if they know the perpetrator,” Felix points out, “It’s only a matter of time until you’re caught. Your time is ticking, man. Dwindling. And you’re not even having fun in this limbo between reality and doom. At least when you’re on death row, say it’s worth it.”

            “You don’t go to death row for abduction!”

            “Still adamant about the peanut butter, aren’t you?”

            This is the shit I mean: Felix’s contradictions start to grind your teeth the way any routine does. At first it’s helpful. In fact, it was probably essential to my escape. Now I can’t stand it, with or without possible benefits they reap. Christ! Like when that cute kid pops gum and your heart melts, until it happens enough your teeth ache with cavities and the polite part of you instilled by society—the part that tells you to chew with your mouth closed—impolitely whispers suggestions of murder.

            Cute quirks lose their touch with enough time.

            Felix sucks his fingers into his mouth and giggles, and a part of me wants to slap that laugh out of his mouth. Unless you’re Beavis and Butthead, all laughter grates.

            Call me hyper-sensitive.

            My misanthropy isn’t a façade crafted to impress—as lack of caring so often inspires admiration in the overly-empathetic—it’s as real a facet of my life as my blood and bones.

            As we drive over the wet roads, Felix presenting to me the burden of living, he rolls the window down and sticks his face out, the damp warmth of a rainy summer evening blowing in, shaking his dyed mop of black hair, prehensile. Forest brackets the road once again, thickets of Louisiana that shiver loudly with the buzz of cicadas, the atmosphere thick with humidity, tree trunks and rain scenting the car naturally, my tree-shaped air freshener artificial and offensive in its attempted recreation of nature. I grab it and toss it out the window.

            “Why didn’t you like the hotel?” Felix asks, “I was enjoying it there.”

            “Too many fart-knockers. Besides, it was ugly. I could make a better fucking hotel.”

            “You just have bad taste. Bet you’d stay in Star Motel again.”

            “Damn right I have bad taste,” I say, bringing a foot up to rest on the cushioned car seat. “I kidnapped you.”

*

            But there is refuge.

            Because my penchant for isolation has reached a head, and because routine is wicked and hotels are becoming routine, we have gone in search for alternatives.

            Now mid-July, the heat has become a needle-tip prickling sensitive areas: necks, backs, scalps, foreheads, and our pants are ripped off to make shorts, both of us too paranoid to be caught out of our dreamscape and purchase anymore from anywhere. I am not irritated by Caril nor Esme—I still feel as passionately for him as ever—but when we revert to our reality we deteriorate, and I realize our only escape is through fantasy.

            After repeated tension, an entire day without talking in a stuffy motel room in Alabama, and finally repainting my car with a shimmery turquoise pigment not even a drag queen would apply to her eyelids, we find our spot.

            In a haze of heated words of vitriol, after an attempt at assault, Felix had flung open the car door and fled into the moon trees far off from the road, brown grass dried from summer’s unforgiving sun crunching beneath his feet. He went further and further at random as I chased him, apologetic, seeing my beauty fade before me through gently rolling plains, his tan calves and shirtlessness a moniker of Jeremy in Pearl Jam’s music video.

            I miss my own music.

            As I continued to pursue my child, I came upon a small rotted house shaded by downy serviceberry, its petals falling like snow over the porch, caking it in an uninterrupted sheet of fragrant sleet, unperturbed by the windless weather, only a footprint stamped amid the buds. Or perhaps it’s downy dogwood.

            In I went, the wood of the home unfazed by termites or beetles, only moss growing in it. Inside the darkness was intercepted by shattered windows, crawling with roaches, which allowed light to stream in and cast a cubic spotlight over my object of desire. There stood Felix, bent in the doorway to a second room, staring at something, the knob of his neck arching over his shirt as kissable as ever.

            The cabin is made with four walls, held upon a crawlspace, with three steps leading up to it. Inside, there is a main room and two separate doors at the southernmost wall, which then lead into a kitchen and bedroom, separated by a thin lace curtain, finely woven with designs of flowers and bees lovingly lining the seams by some ancient seamstress.

            A bookshelf contains the rotted remains of _Hamlet_ , and a blue-bound novel with gold lettering, _Layers of White_ , both with yellowed pages eaten by moths. A single bed smaller than twin-sized donned no mattress, the framing made with hard, dark tree trunk of the same black dogwoods outside. A ratty baby’s blanket, soft and pale, was thrown over it, and a plastic doll with pursed lips and large eyes lay upon it, naked save for painted-on knee socks and black Mary Janes, its handmade craft fading, her face bleached by the sun.

            There is no other furniture.

            In the kitchen, a stove from the 18th century stands with a single cold, rusted pan upon its broken burners. Empty cabinets save for an empty tin printed with “BOISONBERRY PRESERVATIVES” are caked with dust, spotted with dead flies and strung thoroughly with cobwebs. A kitchen table with no chairs fit a miniature family of four, a rabbit corpse long-since eaten away laid upon the doily, somehow intact and rather brightly bleached in the hazy grain of rotted life.

            Ghosts of other appliances shadow the walls, but their physical form evades us. Through the cracks in the walls—somehow sturdy but ushering in drafts through its open slats—oak-leaf hydrangea grows, its flat, ivy-colored leaves overtaking the kitchen in some Jurassic show of natural, flourishing dominance.

            The desolate main room houses nothing save for a rocking chair.

            Felix turned on his heel in the bedroom, hand upon the splinter-inducing doorway, the smell of animal droppings baking in the heat surrounding us. He put his hand upon his hips and then opened them in a show of impatience.

            “Well?” he cried, “Kill me in the woods! You’re already a stereotype.”

            I embraced him, my arms around his waist, and when I pulled him up his foot got caught on a vine and he uprooted it with a snap, as he slunk his skinny arms about my neck and he said into my mouth, void of emotion, as disturbing as faint sirens and tinny, distorted music boxes playing without being wound up, “Mist crawls in my bones at the thought of surviving this.”

            Without explanation, we manage to get the car beside the cabin, beside a fallen log, its new tires embedding the grass, butterflies intrigued by the chrome. A dichotomy exists between it and our timeless space, a living ground for me and Felix, and the generation before us, and the generation before them. There is no telling where this place dates to, but its ground bred nothing, and perhaps was isolationist refuge long ago for a sad, gay man just like me, and his small lover who held a doll close.

            Because the sun dapples through the trees the color of grapefruit in the morning and the sky falls a sleepy lavender at evening, that’s when we spend most time in each other’s arms, Esme catching my waist between his thighs that are slowly filling in our long days filled with food.

            We’ve shed clothes and bug bites make a galaxy on my skin, but Felix is somehow immune—perhaps sugarless.

            Our lovemaking is hard to talk about.

            It’s about all we do besides eat and play our fake games, and those usually revolve around sex too, and it’s really quite boring, how everything equates the sex and eating, these chemical pleasures I’ve never attended to so excessively prior to my kidnapping. At work, I’d spent my time deciphering the needs of hipsters and bikers and hicks and upper-middle-class teenagers, the philosophy behind the artwork needled upon their skin, my craftiness imprinted forever in their lives.

            (Oh, have I mentioned I possess no tattoos of my own?)

            In music, there were tales to be told and mused on of history and of the direct needs of man. There was no cyclical nature like there was in office jobs, at least not willingly. The only thing stopping me from attending an exciting life was me, holed up in my apartment rather than fitting myself into the network of normal human social involvement, coffee shops and clubs, concerts and pubs. But didn’t all that lead to this? Just a longer timeline, less demanding, more flirtatious and extensive.

            And expensive.

            We’ve purchased a mattress and no blankets, far too hot and uncirculated in our small home to plausibly stand any layers besides our tangling. The days drift by slowly, water dripping through the rotting wood, ceilings stained, butterflies exploring Felix’s sleeping face, which he attempts to smack away under the guise they’re roaches—despite an excessive Vietnam-esque spray of Raid upon the home.

            He peels insect legs off their squirming gem bodies as he rides my lap, mumbles _Hamlet_ lines aloud and curls his toes. I grab them constantly and put them in my mouth, nurse them after pampering them with water and his jasmine soap that’s beginning to dry and curdle like milk. His spread legs give off an aroma of childish sexuality, unkempt arousal caught in stained boxers. Unbridled sex that smells of sweat and sugar and fluids intoxicate me as effortlessly as wine might.

            We get washing and drinking water from a well that functions five minutes from our spot, and there we frequently kiss with our hair damp with cool water. On the stone is scrawled: “The levels are infrequent.” Felix says it’s in reference to Alabama’s only ‘real’ earthquake in 1916. How he knows this is beyond me.

            So we live off the land—okay, and $500 worth of grocery store snacks—and we prosper in a land unrestricted by societal impacts, musicless and timeless, where five AM could just as well be 2 PM, sleeping when needed and fucking when bored.

            And we are often bored.

            One night, when our bodies have stunk enough to where it’s accepted, like how you get used to a sickly candle after enough time in its presence, he wakes up and stomps about the room, scratching at his skin and peeling his button-up shirt off, something he insisted upon wearing to further complete Caril’s outfit.

            “I stink!” he wails. Blackened raindrops splatter the windows irregularly.

            “So do I,” I say, sprawling on our newly-stained mattress, plucking at fibers of cloth with my fingers. “Why does it matter?”

            “I can’t take it!”

            “This generation’s overindulgence on convenience—”

            “Shut up! I need a shower! I’m going to get an infection at this rate, or fuckin’ lice!” he kicks the wall, and my eyes widen.

            “Look, man… It’s not, um, don’t do that, alright? The house isn’t very secure.”

            “Like it matters!”

            “Well, fuck, I don’t want to die!”

            Turning on his heel, he kicks the mattress instead and I lift a hand protectively, warningly. “Calm the fuck down,” I insist, “Nothing’s happened. Don’t be such a baby.”

            “Nothing’s happened! Nothing’s happened at all! Nothing will happen! Here we are in our nothingness, doing nothing—and now we’re free, are we?! We’re free to sit on our asses with our dicks in our hands! This is pathetic! This is nothing. Inoffensive _fluff_!”

            “It’s fucking better than our apartment! Better than work and school and being told what the fuck to do and fit into the seamlines of what we’ve been told to, on a payroll that’s dished out to us not on any level of sense, but on levels of arbitrary numbers. We’re expected to live on some designated line while those who rule us prosper in yachts with wine, as if they’re happy.”

            With a caustic smile, Felix approaches the wooden cabinets long abandoned and grabs our bottle of chardonnay, crawling with ants, and presents it to me, those spots moving madly like some LSD-induced nightmare. I blink away from the march, as small and effective as the rain on the shattered window pane, soaking our floor.

            I flop down onto the pillow and cross my arms behind my aching head. “So I’m a hypocrite.”

            “And what’s bought this?”

            “My hypocritical money.”

            “Which is given to you from?”

            “My hypocritical, providing job.”

            “And that?”

            “Makes me a hypocritical maniac who cannot escape this spell of boring shit. Don’t tell me, I’m a Walden ponder,” I raise a hand and run it down my face. “Is everything psychological with you? Don’t you ever speak in layman’s terms like a normal kid? Can’t you talk about how much you like this or that dumb thing?”

            “You’ve stripped me of dumb things! It’s hard to be stupid when you’re alone with your thoughts and a madman.”

            “Mad genius,” I correct sleepily, beckoning him back. His ghostly legs thin as a fawn’s carry him back, and I set my hand upon a tanned knee, running my thumb along the grooves of his bones, still prominent despite him filling out from crab bisque and the like.

            Head tucked beneath my chin, Felix objects: “A stupid fool, a stupid, dumb fool. That’s all you are. That’s all.”

            The rain comes down and I keep my hand upon his bare stomach, spanning it, and study the marks on his neck from when I wrapped my hands about that swan’s throat and pressed, pressed, until he drifted in the car. Those purple blossoms still bloom, strangely, forever hickeys of my possession.

*

            And in the morning I wake up, in a ray of tangerine light that climbs through the treeline. Dust motes play in it and it is silent, and when I walk outside onto the damp grass there is a pink arc of a rainbow in the sky, the air cool—at least for July—and the trees noisy with the first winds of the summer, shaking loudly with squirrels and leaves that dance down onto the tall forest ground. I run my hand over dark, study bark and look up. Intertwined branches house an abandoned nest, hiding the home from hunters like me.

            I open a can of tomato soup, Andy Warhol’s, and sip from it, sitting on the porch with my arm slung over my legs, my penis brushing the porch.

            It is only after I’m cussing and yanking a splinter out of my penis head that I realize that Felix is gone, but I can’t be too concerned, leg resting upon the dinner table as I pry the wood chip out of my genitalia, searing pain like some horrible ureter shooting where it is not supposed to ever go. A dollop of blackish blood bursts from the exit wound, as careful and still as a raindrop on a rose petal—just as delicate too.

            I stare at my bleeding cock for a while, shrugging off the hurt, just as I had my tooth, soft fleshy spots in rather sensitive areas. The table collapses beneath my weight, and blasphemy floods, not that I have any higher entity to insult, and all these words lose meaning as I lay, face down in dusted rubbish, a house abandoned for good reason.

            I am not shaken by loss. I’m too concerned with my poor, injured cock and my throbbing head that has collided with the moist wood, rotted and mossy, dotted with green like an infection, and my red cock wound is against it. Soon the bacteria will crawl inside it and I’ll have to chop my cock off, live castrated and cuckolded, with a sad little bump that only Bonnie could have appreciated.

            Rolling onto my back, I pull on boxers, corduroy shorts, a Hawaiian shirt—this one orange and brown—over a white shirt, socks and shoes, and I scrub a hand over my cropped scalp, approaching the cabinets and grabbing a carton of milk. I unscrew the cap and sit on the counter, downing its entirety the way a drunkard might with old number seven, beloved to him. Full and nauseated, the carton empty in my hands, I drop it, kick the plastic hollowly, and laugh as it hits me back in the chest given my trajectory. I repeat this process, my dick throbbing in upset, in time with my head, like a metronome beating time. My musical process continues with the noise of hollow plastic being kicked, my head pounding, heart going _thump—clonk—thump_.

            Then I crane my neck back and yell, “Damn, am I _bored_!”

            I swing the door open and flip the house off with both hands, walking backwards. “Fuck you and the ghost of the family that lived there.”

            And now, to address the elephant absent from our room: Felix Broad is gone with Esme Blanchet and Caril Ann Fugate, and I have never been more relieved in my life. At this point in time I am sick to death of the little bastard. So unappreciative and argumentative and logical, I could’ve drowned him myself. Pulling the car door open I check the glove compartment for the stack of cash I’d stowed away in a leather wallet, fading at the seam from being stuffed so full. My wallet is thin and outstretched like a once-bloated cunt, the cash gone, and to be surprised is bullshit.

            I gather our meager belongings to pack in the backseat, absent from the makeshift bed for sleepy Felixes and their road-trip naps. Then I sit in the car seat, pontificating over the ghostly presence of Felix, somehow urging me along step by step with whiny but respectable reasoning. Oh, Felix, I did love you. I did, for a long time, or at least the semblance of you. Or the beauty you exuded, like Dionysus. Not to say you ever were Dionysus, but you were so radiant and exaltation-inducing, I became your devotee. A Hades, selfish for my godlike Persephone. But don’t think I am so shallow; I certainly fell in love with your intelligence. If this is the end of it, so be it. I’ll remember the sex fondly. You were a glorious and fine creation, mad and calm and inhibiting and tempting all at once. You were the culmination of human form, but in the end you were just a kid who liked to play pretend, who liked to research serial killers to satiate some taboo, hybristophilia, I think it’s called. And we have that in common, odd taboos, for when I took you I pegged you twelve. Late bloomer you were, I’m sorry I desecrated your porcelain with sun and dye, morphing you into a perfect version of myself.

            I turn the car and the engine rattles, sputters, goes silent.

            Again and again I attempt it, and the tune of failure mimics my milk-bottle heartbeat.

            All my words today have been negative. By the time I finish my spiel of disgust, my fist is bruised purple along one side and the car engine has a significant dent in its pathetic turquoise sheen. A rabbit whose wandered close watches me judgmentally, as if it has any idea how to fix a car.

            Silly rabbit, vehicular repair is for kids.

            In my pocket the wallet goes, in my hand our second milk jug, to the road I go.

*

            I have been walking and my shirt sticks to me with evidence of human work and clings to the outlines of my stomach, notably larger, and when I see the man with a shopping cart full of rubber ducks, plastic yellow mounds beaming in all directions, I offer a hand and I go, “Bro, man, I love you—can I use your phone?”

            He scratches his black chinstrap beard, and turns back his hat, turns it forward, then back again, and grunts, “Uh… What are you gonna do with it?” He sounds Californian, and the flesh beneath his neck jiggles when he speaks. For some reason, he has the _gall_ to wear a black hoodie advertising some energy drink on the back.

            “I need to call someone.”

            “Don’t have your own phone?”

            “It died.”

            “Where’s your car?”

            “I’m calling someone to pick me up.”

            He hands me the phone, his background a photo of some cartoon character with big tits donning a machine gun and full sleeves of tattoos. Energy Drink licks his lip piercing as I dial Sylvester’s number. It goes to his automated voicemail. Antisocial bastard never picks up unknown numbers, which is an odd thing to do given that he’s a narcissist to the nth degree, calling himself Phaedrus in the mirror as he brushes his hair back his face into perfect shiny mounds. I wonder where Felix is right now, if I’ll encounter him, and if I even _want_ to.

            I try again.

            “Fuck, he’s not picking up.”

            Energy Drink dunks a hand into his shopping cart and therapeutically squishes some ducks. I join him, squeaking out tension with an exhale, eyes closed serenely. Once again, Sylvester ignores me in my time of need. Some friend _he_ is.

            Sighing, I stare at the phone in resignation, wipe sweat off my hand and fling it to the street. Energy Drink sucks on his lip ring and shrugs. “Sucks, man.”

            We stand on a barren feeder branching off some interstate, just in the middle of the road, me and him, and his shopping cart.

            “Why do you have this?” I ask, grabbing a one with a pink beret and striped shirt.

            “Why don’t you have a trolley of ducks, man?”

            “Me? I don’t even have a phone!”

            We have a good laugh about that and then he nods. “Hey, man, let’s go.”

            “Where are we gonna go?”

            “Get you somethin’ to eat, you look like you’ve just escaped Auschwitz.”

            As we walk down the road towards a small town stubbed with fast food chains and boat stores, I swallow bile at the thought of poor Thomas rotting in the ocean, skin flaking off. Not because I’m empathetic—who can relate to death, anyway?—but because I’m nervous for what’s to come.

            But for now, I’m at peace with Energy Drink, whose name is Jerry, sitting in a Taco Bell, ducks sat outside. A group of kids run up to them to dunk their hands into the cart, giggling at their catch and scurrying back on excited legs to their penny boards and bikes. Jerry doesn’t seem to mind.

            I sip my orange soda and bite into a taco, blinking blearily at a television covering East Ridge High’s shooting, and I think to myself: _I’m glad that’s not me_. The shooter looks smug in her mugshot, miserable in her yearbook photo. Just a few weeks ago it would’ve been my face, I guess. My dumb face and Doug’s thick mustache worming open to reveal speculations. And after all we’ve done, I and this school shooter, that’s where we end up, on a local news channel in a Taco Bell, maybe with a Wikipedia page visited by one or two sickos with a penchant for true crime.

            But that’s all.

            “Kids are taking your ducks.”

            “Oh, let ‘em have it,” he shrugs, “Fuckin’ need ‘em more than me, man.”

            I rest my chin upon my fist and study the man in front of me, very aware now that looks are quite deceiving and I’d never have pegged him for a giving rubber duck fan with charitable tendencies, or rather sacrificial, given the wicked grins on the destructive faces of the children.

            “Anyway,” says Jerry, biting into a taco, “’s’your name?”

            “It’s Jerry, too,” I say.

            “Is it? What a coinkey-dink.” Shredded cheddar trickles down his lips.

            “Yes,” and I’m not lying, “Yeah, it’s Jerry.”

            “Unpopular name. If it’s not Seinfeld, it’s Jerry Mouse. But you know what? I always liked Thomas Cat more.”

            “Why is that?” I ask, stirring my soda with a straw.

            “Well, he never won. Not like Jerry did.”

            I stir my soda. “But his intentions were masochistic.”

            “And Jerry’s weren’t?”

            We walk outside the fast food chain and share a cigarette, my free hand in my pockets. I watch the evening sky cast a valentine glow over us, the inescapable forest spotting the parking lot with persistent shadows despite sundown; shadows forever-lingering in that cluster of the unknown branches and trunks, even when the accusatory sun sets, and that speculator sun has nothing left to mull over after glaring down on that protective canopy trees create all day. Yet the shadows remain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, unedited, first draft, will be fixed, will be tweaked, will be polished, will be perfected.
> 
> As always, thank you all for all your feedback. It's implausibly appreciated every time.


	19. And Then

     And then, Sylvester calls back.


	20. On and On and On and On and On and On

**Part II**

Looking in my own eyes  
I can't find the love I want,  
Someone better slap me,  
Before I start to rust,  
Before I start to decompose.

—"Aeroplane"  
Red Hot Chili Peppers

            When Sylvester drives up the tires screech and he makes a show of roaring in front of me, engine revving. It’s a loud, cheesy entrance, because, in his head, he lives in a perpetual episode of _Miami Vice_. He even goes so far as to roll the window down and leave an arm hanging out of the white Ferrari, sunglasses hanging off the bridge of his nose. I chew on a white sun-sore on my lip and stare at the moon-curve of his face, round and pinked. Tucking my tongue between my teeth, I exhale and look skyward, biting down any instinctual arguments that may arise with that dumb, cheeky _I-told-you-so_ look. He takes off his sunglasses, indefinitely hundreds upon hundreds of dollars packed into those stupid rims.

            I lean down in the window and press my forehead to his.

            He jerks back as though stung and his plump lip curls to expose jagged and bleached teeth. “Oh, now you love me!”

            “Sure. You came all this way… Oh, Sylvester, it’s been so long.”

            “Oh, you only love me because I can _do_ _things_ for you?”

            I wipe my nose on my sleeve and stare at him, my eyes pink and the bags beneath them bruised, watercolor receptors of desperation. “I have to tell you something,” I whisper, “A lot of things. I’m sorry for making you come here. I don’t have anyone else.”

            At that, his lips quirk in a little smile.

            Exhaling, he unlocks the car and I walk around to get in the luxury passenger’s seat, and to say I’m not impressed by its interior is bullshit. As above-and-beyond as I attune myself to be in accordance with humanity, it’s _nice_. I roll the window down and withdraw a cigarette from the Hawaiian shirt pocket.

            “Don’t you dare,” Sylvester says, “When did you start smoking?”

            Surveying the Marlboro, I shrug and slide it back in its box, “After Caril inspired me to.”

            “Who the hell is Caril?” asks Sylvester, weaving around an eight-wheeler with the attentiveness of a cokehead. It blares its horn as he slows down in front of it and he lifts a finger in the rearview, making it inch on our ass.

            “Christ!” I hiss, gripping the seat, “You ever seen _Vacation_? Knock it off!”

            He speeds past green signs and lesser-than-him drivers. I study them out the window the way children do—a round-faced Hispanic woman with a stack of papers on her dashboard, hair pulled up in a frizzy bun. A bearded hipster in a red flannel shirt, sitting beside a bald white man in a fleece jacket, collar pulled up to his neck, despite the swamp-water weather. In a minivan, a black woman with bouncing kids in the backseat presumably yells at her spawn, mouth forming wide shapes, white teeth glinting with promises of punishment. One kid presses his face to the window and waves a tiny, long-fingered hand at me. I wave back.

            “Who—is—Caril?” he demands, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of his hand with each word, as though delivering a smack to Caril, to this Caril, this Felix, this Esme, who has taken precedence over him.

            “Nickname for Esme. Esme was also a nickname for Felix, which is Esme’s real name,” I explain, all precautions floundered. “I wonder where he’s gone. Surprised you haven’t asked.”

            He cocks a brow and kicks the car up to one-hundred. I twist my hand in the seatbelt as my legs turn jelly. I think, for a second, we’re airborne. “Slow down! Stop looking at me, _stop_ , look at the road!”

            “Why would I asked where Esme is?”

            “You’re always nosy, and quite jealous,” I point out, watching the speedometer as it inches down to a meager 97. “I figured you’ve always been in my head, trying to see where my cock’s been, so you can cry about it and rip shreds of pity out of my dark, dark heart, smear it over yourself because that’s as admirable as attention, am I right?”

            “Who’ve you been talking to? You sound like a madman.”

            “I’ve been talking to Esme, man!” I say in exasperation, “’til he ran off!”

            “How have you been talking to Esme?”

            Slapping my hand on my knee, impatience crawling up my skin, I yell, “The way we’re talking, fucko! What, you think in this disconnected age, we’re Skyping like every other pathetic maggot with perfectionist forms on the Internet? Fuck!”

            Sylvester drives on while I nurse my fingers in my mouth, frowning out the window and watching a girl spin around a streetlamp, hand on the pole, her pink dress flashing white globes of skin.

            Sylvester finally, caustically, says, “The medium I would’ve pegged would’ve been a Ouija board, Jerry.”

            Oh.

            Oh me, oh my.

*

            So I’ve lost it.

            So what?

            Not a big deal. It certainly explains a lot. Explains why I never got a blowjob. I’m not flexible enough. I’d never even asked Felix to, dream-Felix, who had been so sexually active right when I was. Both aroused at the same time, in correlation.

            Dear reader, I am no child rapist.

            Only a child killer.

            Allow me to explain, as I’ve pieced this together on our drive back to Texas, a long drive that swallows the majority of the night.

            “When you showed up the kid wasn’t dead, dude,” Sylvester explained, “But he was pretty fucked up. You really messed up his neck. There was internal bleeding, I guess, or something like that, and he couldn’t speak. There was blood in his throat. When I bound his mouth with the caution tape, all that spittle blood couldn’t leak, and he was breathing through his nose, swallowing down iron. It was really hard to watch. I think in the end he just swallowed his own bloody vomit too many times, and snorted it, and died. I know because his nose was leaking this residue—”

            “Enough, man. _Enough_.”

            “Anyway, when you woke up I already got rid of him. But you weren’t acting like it. You were just talking on and hefting around this airspace beneath your arm as if it had weight. Like the kid was still there. It was pretty spooky, and I asked you if you were messing with me. Not that you answered or anything. Too busy talking to this cloud of nothing, like a fuckin’ weird-ass. I wasn’t about to interrupt. I figured it was steeled denial. Which is, if I remember correctly, the first of the five stages of grief, though I guess when you’re the cause of the death there’s something like shock that makes it intenser. You know, the denial turns selfish and you’ve gotta be like, ‘nah, I didn’t just do that.’”

            “And your tantrum as I left…?”

            “What tantrum?”

            The drive is spent tongue-in-cheek with the furious memories of my past few weeks crawling up the back of my skull, recreating themselves in my head with the void of Felix’s form. All he was was the culmination of the voice of reason. That was it.

            He was a masturbatory fantasy taken too far.

            All he was was a child. He wasn’t a genius or a psychopath—that was all me. He didn’t prosper in the deaths of Bonnie or Thomas. That was my unlikable side giggling at my own power, glorifying this murderous capability. Self-congratulation humanized, as well as self-loathing, judgment, side-eyes and cocked brows, sneers and self-deprecation in turn. Which was probably why he slowly started look like me.

            In the end, Felix was just some kid who didn’t want to do school anymore; a kid I never fucked, kissed once; a kid who opened up to me about his shattered history. The downfall was never real. I strangled him on the brim of our honeymoon phase and created the inevitable ruins in my mind, connecting the dots with jagged pen marks.

            What purpose did it all serve then?

            Shit, man. What did _yours_ serve?

            “Home sweet home,” coos Sylvester at his boxed home, grey cubes stacked upon each other, prison cells of fineness and modernism, once again hidden in the strange red woods foreign to Texas. He carries my bags in, his arms line with pale muscles.

            I stop at the door, hand on the frame, peering into his home, its tacky whiteness excessively prominent in its villainy. Why are hospital sheets white? Won’t the blood show up? No, actually, it’s easier to bleach the stains that way.

            Chemical solution fading innards, breathing squirming living innards once warm and functional, with a purpose. To clean that dumb cloth your fat ass sits in so you can watch your mind-numbing game shows.

            Was Esme dead by the time I got here? Or did he die in this home?

            Can you really call it a home? So clinical and impractical with its plastic white palm trees—trunk, too—how could this be tinged with personal, comforting inflection?

            But it’s a place to sleep.

            (A whisper, childish, inciting: Why are you so obsessed with finding a place to sleep? Every destination seems to serve the singular purpose of falsifying your reality further.)

            Have I been mourning? I haven’t lost anyone close to me in a long time. Is this my way of dealing with it? Do killers mourn their victims?

            I imagine so. When Jeffrey Dahmer was asked why he ate his victims, his consistent answer remained: _I didn’t want them to leave_.

            What a strange philosophy! A child made alive in his death, at the hands of the killer—never thought I’d relate.

*

            “Gas, grass, or ass: no one rides free,” Sylvester quotes, as I walk to the free side of his bed—enormous, excessive—to lay beside him. He runs his hand over the silk sheets, the color of wet sand, shiny as boy hair.

            Constant stimulation is provided for Sylvester, because Sylvester lives alone. He hosts cocktail parties weekly, goes sailing bi-weekly, clubbing monthly, frequents movie theatres and concerts, attends family parties with the Disneys, and is probably a male escort. And yet, he refuses to see anyone monogamously. The television accompanies him in the silence when he breaks from the social interaction. He’s a tailored gentleman at first, until he begins to like someone. Then they fear the clinginess, the childishness, the devotion a small boy has for his mother.

            It almost makes me sad, the way Sylvester squeezes so hard he breaks the bones of the people he wants. If he was any more redeemable I’d probably offer my condolences (appreciation) more willingly. But he’s not. He’s a slimy slug, that Sylvester, rearrange his letters and ‘sly’ begins it.

            It’s probably not all that inviting for a preceding fuck when your partner looks nauseous and the TV is advertising a colon cancer check, in which you must send your shit to a lab in a small plastic package. But the game show channel targets old folks, not hormonal young men, conspirators of murder.

            It is strange how I didn’t know about real sex since I left with Felix in the backseat—how it _really_ felt, I mean. Sylvester’s spit is magnesium and hot, too hot, like pressing your tongue to a rattling heater shuddering out exhalations of sun rays and desert winds. And he’s wet and warm and moving, and my leg shakes with the incessant impatience of a high schooler in the dredges of final math classes. He slaps me on the back of the thigh and laughs when I enter him, unprotected, lubed with that liquid mercury spit of his, and his body is a real, clutching, moving thing, out of my control. Real as couch stains and just as reprehensible. There are sprawling limbs, too big, that get in the way and when I set my hand in spots I’m disgusted to feel arms beneath me, a breathing torso. And the tongue, a snakelike, slithering limb that moves too much and too intensely, feeding into my jowl and licking there the way Sid Vicious did to my face in my sleep. Far too invasive. Smelly, unpleasant.

            My dick is even straining under the clutch he creates around me, and I swallow hard and wince, going soft as I focus on this humanness, while his own cock, uncut and fat and pale like a meal worm, spits honey on his chubby belly.

            But I close my eyes and inhale, inhale the smell of myself, pungent from lack of bathing, still stinking from my time at the well-house in God Knows Where, Alabama. I conjure up images of Felix in his cherubic beauty, godly form, that dream boy I made myself. I think of his summer skin and blessed gold hair. I think of how real he was. I inhale, inhale, and his expensive lavender detergent rises from the sheets, cool and crisp and flowering. While he’s in the throes of ecstasy at each pump, one arm hooking his leg back to press to his chest, I lean over and hook my fingers in the Hawaiian shirt, hefting it up and pressing it to my nose, all mothballs and sweat and overturned earth, tinned food and jasmine soap.

            When Sylvester intertwines his fingers with mine, I can almost imagine Esme’s, skeleton-like, lithe and modelesque.

            I cum miles after he does, right when a family wins $20,000, right when Sylvester throws his head back and laughs, cackling like Roger Waters, relaxing his legs that flop off my waist, leaving two pink marks down my hipbones like strips of flayed meat, sweaty and warm. Clingy as a koala, this boy.

            “Mine,” he decides, grabbing the back of my neck and pulling me down to the bed, and he repeats, “Mine.”

            At night I have sweaty dreams of opera houses presenting ballet, all the lights viscerally bright upon the viewers, like a hospital in their fluorescence, white and accusatory as an all-seeing eye, making all of us viewers shift and duck our heads in shame, because the dancers, those sweet ballerinas, are children, and we all know exactly why we’ve come here.

            The show ends and faunlets like Esme bow. As the audience floods the streets onto a snowy road (I’ve never seen snow in person in my life) I stand parallel to a man with ringed eyes, irritable and grey, clad in leather, flecked in white. Dream-me loses no sense of humor as he goes, “Chris Hansen’s going to come visit any minute now.”

            The man tucks his lips beneath a mustache and fixes a gaze behind my shoulder, eyes narrowed. “What on earth do you mean?”

            One of the dancers sprints from the studio, Apollo legs skinny and toned kicking up snow as he runs into the warm leatherette of his father, who cradles his head against his chest. The boy peers over at me from the shiny slant of his dad’s shoulder, face undefined but eyes indefinitely lavender. And I am alone in this heinousness, my arousal as sick a disease as cholera. The light was on me, and me alone. That artificial glare only a precursor for punishment due to my unrepentance.

            Waking up in your own vomit is very dangerous, you know. My sickness with myself is trying to kill me, I’ve refused to recognize it for so long. And though I have acknowledged it, I have had yet to absorb it, for there is a roadblock in my mind that swallows societal morals without chewing, deposits the nutritional value of those ethics into my subconscious, where dreams lash me for the wickedness I’ve delivered.

            It’s a sad, sad morning, my cheek caked in the green guts Felix—no, I—expelled out the car the hour Bonnie died. It’s the first pale dove of the morning outside, windows splattered with rain, one of those drowsy summer days of confinement and limitation. Again my head throbs. I’m a connoisseur of migraines.

            The day goes as follows:

            I wash the puke off my cheek with a bar of “charcoal” soap, which costs fifteen dollars.

            I do the laundry, my clothes and the cream sheets stained with puke and cum.

            Sylvester stares at me with half-mast eyes, a cat’s leer, and my blood pressure spikes.

            We eat Frosted Flakes and his foot crawls between my legs beneath the glass table.

            Technicolor daytime TV show hosts cater to the dumb, big American populace with relatable jokes and pop news. Sylvester pays little attention. I pay less.

            I escape Sylvester’s gleaming affection in the bathroom to shower, where I curl up in the porcelain and tap my bitten nails on my knees, alone, alone, weeping quietly, for I miss my shattered illusion, my ghostly child.

            After my shower, Sylvester blows me and I don’t get hard until I draw images of slim hips in my mind.

            We drive to Burger King for lunch, where he recites some show’s monologue about said restaurant which isn’t that funny, but I sit there in faux-amusement, nodding and placing my deadpan _that’s funnies_ on schedule. I eat two burgers and large fries, and then ice cream macerated in chocolate syrup. Boredom makes you eat.

            Sylvester distastefully comments on my weight gain. I distastefully comment on his STUPID FISH ASSHOLE MOUTH FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!

            We make up with a strawberry cake and a hug.

            The day drags, the rain falls harder. A rabbit in the yard hides under a juniper’s bend, snacking on a yellow daisy, a neon dot in the dreariness.

            By nighttime we’ve watched _The Exorcist_ , _Carrie_ , and _The Shining_. He grabs my arm harder every time. We get in bed, have sex, and sleep.

            It’s a dull cycle for a few days. He attends a party, but otherwise his life is null and void of meaning. He blathers to me about the anatomy of sailboats, but it’s about as passionate as he gets. It’s a sad state of affairs when he becomes upset, because when he cries, it pours, and I understand entirely my appeal for him. The childish, immature tantrums almost arouse me as he points accusatory fingers, weeps and hits my chest weakly, threatens suicide—always does. It’s a trademark by now. _And the smell will be the only thing alerting the neighbors!_

When it finally stops raining, the guy makes me sleep in a hammock with him, and notes of summer—cicadas, dewy blood oranges, a rare wind brought upon post-storm, wet bark and tanned legs tangled. But my joy has evaporated.

            I think about the house in Alabama, and I wonder how long ago it was abandoned. The books there gave no hint. Rocking in the hammock, I think of how it must be in a box. Were cars invented before or after the house? Was a family living there before cars were created? Why? What could possibly be created there? What kind of refuge could one find? And how could someone stay trapped in those corners voluntarily? Surely, he could not walk far enough to escape this small world inside the trees, this forgotten spot. It would become his reality—just that box, like Sylvester.

            Who doesn’t utilize their Ferrari to its full potential? Sylvester fucking Disney, that’s who. Trapped again and without my driving force (Esme, not the car), I am inclined to go back into the depressive schedule of following motions, the future planned and secured and safe, life fluffy and comfortable as grey matter, inoffensive pulp. Cleaning the stove after making meals, trying new sex positions, always unsatisfying, my arousal damp and throbbing with necessity, not with joy.

            I am almost tempted to call upon my past delusions. But I have no idea what Sylvester would make of it. I am beginning to forget Esme’s essence, with the rest of the world. Google searches elicit few results that I haven’t already seen. I tap my nails in disappointment, as though waiting for a gift in the mail, even if dusted with anthrax, at least it’s mail. In the hollow tube, void.

            I miss him; even the crafted dummy I puppeteered, and let puppeteer me.

            After a shower, wrapped in a thin towel the color of a robin’s egg, I stare into the mirror. My hair has grown back out shortly, my eyebrows full and low over my eyes again, my mouth a jagged, ugly line, lips pale and waterlines anemic, nostrils extended, face slightly flushed with sunkisses. I am once again recognizable as Jerry P, name listed in the papers.

            It is fear-inducing, for I still have demons to hide. My evidence is no longer actively with me.

            I suppose it never was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure this might be met with frosty reception, but it's what I had in mind since the beginning. ONCE AGAIN, first draft. Subject to change. Feedback incredibly appreciated, even crucial. Thank you all so much. Also, check out the first chapter's notes to see some incredible artwork.


	21. Chicken Fucking Nuggets

Success has been so easy for you  
But don't forget, it's me who put you where you are now  
And I can put you back down too.

—"Don't You Want Me"  
The Human League

* * *

 

            We’re playing Scrabble, and he insists ‘Ticonderoga’ isn’t a word. Yet I’ve stayed mute as he put together ‘vioces’—a pathetic anagram of ‘voices.’ I fucking hate board games like I hate game shows. They’re too universal and dull and inoffensive, like sports and not chewing gum in class. I want to bang my head off the table but refrain.

            “It’s a city in New York.”

            “Cities don’t count,” he says.

            “Neither do misspellings,” I tap his vioces and he squints at it for a while, before consulting a digital dictionary and switching the letters carefully, fat face beaming with pride. I’m so sick of his face—it’s so small in the blob of his head, beady eyes and a big grin in a fruit pit of flesh that serves as his chubby, jiggling face.

            I never could stand pride at simple tasks. My palms itch, staring back at that wimpy, plump face, as bitable and easy-to-tear as an apricot. I could beat it brownish-blue, into hurt submission, pressing the flesh until it leaks its juice, lick that up for nutrients.

            Congratulations, bitch, your parents successfully gave birth to you. Trophy for existing.

            I shouldn’t be complaining. Things are going to get worse.

            “So,” Sylvester picks out the letters and flicks them to me one by one, “You don’t get the points. Try again.”

            I stare at the board, harboring my anger and letting it age like a fine wine, keeping frenzy at bay with my face pressed to the carpet, and then snap my head up.

            In go the letters: D-E-C-O-R-A-T-I-N-G.

            Fourteen points.

            He slaps a hand on the floor and sits up. “That isn’t fair! You cheated.”

            I rest my hand on my chin and say monotonously, “How did I cheat.” There is no curiosity, just expectation.

            His explanation is as bizarre to me as the giant Mickey Mouse sculpture in the middle of his house. Oh, yes—he has that. It’s quite disturbing. Five feet of a grinning cartoon in monochrome, eyes as black and gelatinous as his charcoal soap. “If you’re smarter you have to do easier words.”

            “’Decorating’ is easy.”

            “I mean shorter.”

            “No.”

            He slams a fist on the ground and then shakes it out, as though the plush white fuzziness of the carpet has actually done damage. “Fine!” he says, pushing the board away and standing up, “Take your points. It’s a stupid game, anyway.”

            I watch him descend the staircase with an exaggerated pout thrown over his shoulder, fingers trailing the handrail and eyes slanted with accusation. What a queen.

            I pursue him, because I want to eat tonight—he withholds food when upset.

            “We can do something else,” I suggest.

            Strangely, the vitriol I maintained for Thomas has evaporated. I no longer feel those murderous urges in living arrangements. There are certainly times where I want to hurt the dumbass, incontrovertibly, but nothing to the extent of how I felt with my prior roommate. Though Sylvester is far, far more annoying—yes, extremely, Thomas has no competition—I do not lay a hand upon him, I raise my voice on occasion, I roll my eyes and harbor my poison. Bored housewives put up with this kind of shit, and so can I.

            He waves a hand at me to dismiss me: “There’s nothing more I want to do with you.”

            If I am defeated, then I am normal. This is how normal people deal with the worst type of people. This is how normal people live with their shitty roommate. They bite their tongue and compromise, and because your roommate is shitty, and he _will_ get his way. So you don’t do shit. You don’t kidnap a child or murder him, because that’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to thank them for letting you stay in their isolated mansion where boredom eats at you and the marching clock leads you towards death, which has no significance like suicide, when you simply wither away like an old tree.

            “Tell me what I can do, man. I don’t like to see you upset,” I lie.

            This kindness stems from dependency. The rich are sociopathic because there is no charity to extend. Human suffering doesn’t apply to them. Empathy is stunted, for gluttony and greed feeds them, their own wellbeing taking precedence: the finest foods, the nicest apartments. The best group of friends.

            How I wish I could be like that again. But I have to give a damn about human life in this instance, because it is what is providing for me. I rupture that, and my own lifetime dwindles to exactly what Sylvester deigns it is worth.

            Don’t be so disgusted: this is America, after all. Self-sufficiency is sewn into the veins of our great nation. We coined social Darwinism. Especially Texas, where homes are bigger, families bigger, where your conservatism is prevalent, where you’re a mother hen of protection over your family but anyone of any idiosyncratic difference is deplorable. You choose your kind and you harvest it with your godlike hands, demanding traits not consummately perfect, but agreeable. Your opinion is law.

            I am not being sarcastic or judgmental of these types. They’re my kin. Everyone here is just like that—Sylvester has no one to protect, so he does not maintain the false kindness. Say he runs me off. So what? He can thread together a billion new friends with his money, a constant source from the kindness of his ancestry.

            It’s a capitalist set of emotions. If you don’t like it, well, go to Canada, you pansy.

            (And remember to praise Jesus or suck Lucifer’s cock.)

            Like with an obnoxious boss, you bite your tongue so you can go on living your shitty life—excuse me, not living, surviving. This is no way to live. This is probably worse than my old apartment life. Christ, there is no ‘probably.’ It’s definite. I glare at the back of Sylvester’s head and imagine raising a rifle to that sphere of perfectly combed, blond hair, turning it into chunks of red gelatin that flings itself at the walls.

            Like the Kool Aid man, bursting through the walls! The thought amuses me.

            OH, YEAH!

            “Nothing, there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”

            I’ve probably tainted the word ‘decorating’ for him forever—he’ll probably have flashbacks as vivid as a veteran in Nam.

            Sitting down on the couch with a flourish, he turns on the television. The channel defaults to the local news, and a blip of an arson report is announced—after these commercials—and he turns it back off with the panicked immediacy of the damned. I frown, crossing my arms as I stand behind him, bent over the couch.

            “What was that?”

            “I’m not talking to you.”

            Circling the couch, I grab the remote from him and he straightens up to me, or attempts to, standing a few inches below me. Power-play is quite convenient when you’re in the six-foot range.

            “Give it back!” he demands, snatching at the long cube of cool metal. I raise it over my head, immature as it is, and smile down on him with the righteous smugness of a teasing older brother. He hits me in the ribs and I hunch over, arm protectively wrapped about my ribcage.

            He snatches the remote. We tussle. I win with a knee pinned to his neck and I turn the television on.

            “…a safe return for fifteen-year-old runaway, Felix Broad.”

            There he is.

            There he is!

            With his smooth black hair and drawn face, waving at the camera, standing beside his parents, my boy has such long fingers, the second knuckles bulbous in their thinness, almost skeleton-like. There’s a definitive term for this affliction, but I can’t put a (bony, curved) finger on it. His mother plies a tissue beneath her eyes, makeup dribbling down her white cheeks like black ink. The Dallas family—reunited once more.

            My heart is beating and my hands are trembling as though I’ve narrowly escaped danger, though I know it is staring me in the face, with evergreen eyes and that bowed mouth turned up at the corners, eyes smiling without mirth. _You know I’m watching_ , I think.

            _You fucking know it_ , that smile says. And is that pinkness on his left cheek natural, or…?

            “The Broads have declined to comment, but they’re undeniably happy their son is safe at home, back in their arms. Just in time for the new school year!” A laugh, those low _heh_ s quiet but prominent in the way mature and controlled adults present, dripping with artifice. Then some arson, source being investigated, flames licking the walls of an office building, fifty-five out of work.

            I redirect my line of sight to Sylvester, glowering with a head tilted down, eyes turned up beneath his low brows, still on the floor beneath my knees, hands clenched by his sides. “Oh,” he begins, the first inhale of some self-pity inducing spiel, “Oh, I see—”

            I wind my fist back and he puts his hands up, eyes so wide and shiny like marbles I can only halt in its reflection of childishness. “Wait, wait! Jerry, knock it off!”

            “I’m crazy, am I? Or is the _it-was-all-in-your-head-and-Factor-X-never-existed_ route easier to stunt the drive in me that takes me away from you?”

            He covers his face with his hands. I grab the remote again and stand up, rewinding as far as I can to watch the clip play over and over:

            Brian grinning with relief, mouth so wide and teeth sharp and set in his mouth like an anatomical skull. His wife clutching her soiled Kleenex and sobbing dribbles of black-blue. Felix staring right into the camera, one cheek pink, hands shielding his squinted, upturned eyes from the sun.

            Reinvigorated, I land a punch to Sylvester’s snubbed nose.

            He yelps like a wounded animal and a burst of black blood leaks out of his nostril. He wraps his legs around my waist, eyes slanted and watery. “You never even denied it,” he says, snotty and plugged as though speaking through the plush of a pillow, “You just took the theory completely. You’re disconnected.”

            “You killed my purpose, man!”

            He brings his white shirt up to his nose and holds it beneath the leaking orifices, dying it. “Why’s he your purpose, huh? Why? What has he to offer that I don’t?”

            “You’re just an average American, no drive or general goals or directions. You’re in the lap of luxury, dry humping it. You’re bored at the meaninglessness of life. If I took away every dollar from you now, you’d live exactly the same. No rich kid can absorb the full extent of poverty, even when thrust into it. You’re a bore. You don’t even do anything about this comfortable mattress of routine and decadence.”

            “Trust me, I’m not average.”

            “Believe that all you want,” I say, pulling him up with his outstretched hand, “Doesn’t everyone?”

            “And what makes him different?”

            “Adolescent awareness that shit sucks before adulthood complacence sets in.”

            “Oh, how special, you’ve found yourself teenage angst. It’s only a matter of time before he Cobains himself.”

            He snorts up running blood that leaks explosively over the front of his shirt, eyes turned up in pain, a blooming strip of color crawling up the bridge of his nose. I shake my hand out from the impact. “You really should appreciate me,” he sneezes clumps of red into the sink, “At least I’m cute and rich.”

            “Undeniable,” I murmur, walking up to him and running the heels of my palms up his back as he leaks into the kitchen sink, a pink seashell more fitting for a bathroom. Utility has no place in excess. When will _he_ ever cook?

            “Stop touching me, you freak.”

            “Sorry I punched you in the nose.”

            Now _this_ —this is not self-preservation in the form of societally-implemented politeness. This is just kindness preceding our goodbyes. No one wants to end on a bad note. Not with Sylvester, and _definitely_ not with the tiny, godlike love of your life.

            There is no plan of action. There is simply a clawing, primal urge to return to Felix, to swallow him down whole and run with him, far away, nurse him as my own once more and isolate him once again, with me and me alone, where we can make love and craft new worlds, craft perfected forms of humans, wicked and interesting, unbound by rules once more. I want our imaginary playground, in all different spots of the world. I need him back, need him, and all possibilities of consequence have fled from my mind. In our month—I think it’s a month, but time dissipated in our world—together, we were open to endlessness. Restriction came only in the form of human interaction with anyone but us. Yes sir and no ma’am, and no, I am not local kidnapper Jerry P. No, I am not using PROUD TEXAN GRANDPA to obscure my face.

            My coop is uncaged. There is no logical progression to my thoughts—how I will get to him, what I’ll use to provide for us, the money still cooped in the car in Alabama, a mere $545. I need him, though, I know that, need him like bees need sugar water. I must bathe in the honey he exudes, I must take him away from these suburbanites of limitation, I must take him away from the machine of the school system.

            I realize I’m panting like a dog when Sylvester says, “You know how in India, there’s this sort of code where boys and girls are kept away from each other when they’re young, and all sexuality is looked down upon? When they become adults, they don’t know how to act in accordance with society, so they produce weird gestures and the most awkward social interaction you’ve ever seen. They run off that human instinct that’s been pushed down to the back of their penises their whole lives, and aggressively dry hump their lovers or just make a fool of themselves. I think that happened with you.”

            I ignore this and gesture to the television, “He’s not _dead_ , your liar!”

            “So what? You believed me. Shows how off your rocker you are. You didn’t even second guess that shit. I made it up on a whim when I realized the little fuck got away from you. For all I knew, _you’d_ killed him yourself. I mean, I didn’t use Google or anything, dude. I just took a guess.”

            Slapping him on the back in a gesture of backhanded friendliness, ushering out some more reddened spews of globby blood, I rub his spine and say, “Well, my friend, it’s time for me to take my leave and return to my delusion.”

            He snorts up a string of blood wetly. “Wait,” he says, frantic, “No, you can’t go.”

            “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done, and I’m so thankful for you for taking me out of bumfuck Alabama, but I need to get back to him. That kid’s my everything.”

            He blows his nose and the front of his shirt is deeply reddened as though with wine. His blood is darker than I’d imagined. “You don’t care about me. You don’t care about anything but that dumb kid.”

            I point at him, “Cor- _rect_! I’d curb stomp a puppy for a handjob from that kid right now.”

            His frown deepens unflatteringly, that skull mouth of his clicking in dissatisfaction. “Why don’t you want me?”

            I go to the fridge and pull out a bag of red grapes, popping them into my mouth. “A better question is, why do you want me? I’m not desirable, not like you and Felix are. In fact, I’m a total dick. I have no emotion and I’m not that handsome.”

            “People always want what they can’t have,” he says. “It’s the only interesting aspect of a relationship, really, the hunt.”

            “And that’s because…”

            “The rest is too comfortable. It gets boring.”

            I toss a grape in his mouth, but it bounces off his teeth and rolls onto the floor. “Bingo,” I say.

            He throws his hands up in defeat, cranes his long neck back, Adam’s apple bulbous in this throat, and groans an excessive noise usually exclusive to teenage girls on sitcoms. When his head snaps back down he pierces me with a look of snobbish judgment and I look away at the marble beside him to avoid breaking that bird’s beak of a leaking nose further.

            Apollo says, “You need to think about this logically,” so I, Dionysus, smirk.

            He catches me by the arm and I jerk it away, I can’t stand his touch anymore, I can’t stand it, my fingers curl into a fist that whitens at the knuckles. My skin crawls, and I am a hypocrite. He lowers his hand, hurt, and turns away.

            “You have no money, no car, and I certainly won’t provide for you. You can’t return to your own apartment—there’s undoubtedly an ongoing investigation,” he blinks rapidly, then squeezes his eyes shut so tight hot tears squeeze out of the corners and roll down his red cheeks.

            “I’ve got my fist; I’ve got my wits.”

            Slapping his hands on the counter with enough ferociousness to make my palms sting in echoes of phantom pain—strange, how sympathy bleeds physically for that and not his nose—he raises his voice to a pitch I’m familiar with only in our heated arguments; he thinks I’m bluffing.

            “You ungrateful, selfish bastard,” he accuses, “Think with your mind and not your dick. Think of all I’ve done for you, and think of what _Felix_ has done before you wander into desolation, unprotected and broke and homeless in search of him. He ran from you! He went home! He doesn’t want you. You go back, and he runs further. His dad blows your head off with a shotgun. That’s it.”

            So it may be, but a thought bubble blooms in my head under the category ‘consequence,’ and it’s blank as a sheet of paper. As I make my way to the tall door, wordless, he follows me, frantic, screaming, a wife threatened with divorce. “You can’t leave! You have nowhere to go!”

            On I go, out the door, satisfied and aloof. The weather is heady and shadowed beneath the trees. I walk on, my legs don’t even hurt, but Christ, I’ve been walking a lot.

            “Jerry!” he shrieks, and grabs me by the back of the shirt. I halt and half-gag on the neck of my t-shirt hooking me at the trachea. “At least stay for dinner.”

            I shake my head, “I’m good, man. I’ll give you a call soon.”

            “I’m making chicken _nuggets_!” he insists, a tempting offer, but no, I must go on.

            I jerk out of his hold as he wails behind me, “Chicken _fucking_ nuggets, Jerry! Chicken nuggets! You piece of shit!”

            But he does not pursue me as I walk through the jogging path paved for rich and athletic businessmen and their trophy wives. Running is for sociopaths in denial, you know. I stroll on. Somehow, Sylvester continues insisting I will regret not taking the chicken fucking nuggets.

            Back into the chaotic waltz of mad love. Back to the resistance. I hope to god he doesn’t overthrow me.


	22. Neon Orange Burger King

Further we go  
And older we grow  
The more we know  
The less we show

—"Primary"  
The Cure

* * *

 

            The deep South has protected me. Swallowing the bodies, obscuring my presence. Crystalline glimpses of dusk through the breaks of the trees shine lavender upon the grass, blotches of sundown like vitiligo speckling the earth. Over a rickety bridge once painted red, now flecked to expose rotting wood, a stream runs low and brown, trickling, framed by roots and sloped dirt where a duck and her children bob. Fragrant summer flowers exhale intonations of full bloom, spread legs and thick scents. I take a seat by a tree and rest my head against the back of it, the bark scratching my head, an ant tickling behind me ear before I squash it with a fingertip.

            I am going to get back to Felix. But right now I breathe in the summer sweetness and sit. I could sit here forever. I could just sit here and do nothing else for my entire life. I will waste here and chew the end of bark, watch the ducks float. I can rot and watch runners jog by, jog cyclically, going back home after to shower, eat, sleep, repeat. Then they’ll come back and I’ll be sitting here, growing vines and lifting an arm to wave. They’ll wave back. They’ll ask, why are you just sitting there, don’t you know you’re wasting your life? And I’ll point at their muscled legs and say, when will you strangle someone with those?

            Don’t get me wrong, I don’t insist on the primordial, but the purpose behind defined physique is delectable in its capability. I’d very much like to be as built, but that’d require going to the gym, and performing _reps_. No, I’ll just spectate like an animal, in the midst of these flourishing and lyrical shrubberies that hide me. The secret garden. Nature has not betrayed me.

            Well, save for the splinter in my cock, but even the porch was manmade.

            I unzip and study my penis, which has miraculously been able to do a lot of work around Sylvester these past few weeks. The mark has half-disappeared, and no infection has resulted. I tuck it back away and rub myself over my pants, then scratch myself and exhale.

            I like the smell of the plants. It is not sharp like evergreen or pine needles, not excessively fresh like in the north. In the north, everything is intense: neon and harsh sunlight, shapes clear and defined, bright and hard and numerical. In the south scents are lightly perfumed and the world is obscured by shadows, the heat slowing time and actions. Ghosts lie from the Civil War to the actions of the vitriolic, burning with moonshine and tradition. Excessive sweet drips like sap, honey that drizzles abstractly over the morality of man and dissolves it with that sugar. And then flashes of moment at the height of the day—when heat culminates in maroon.

            It is these syrupy thoughts that lull me to a half-sleep with my hand rubbing my crotch, eyes focused on the low pink clouds over the horizon, where a red blot of sun sinks and cicadas stir mad and loud and endless, their buzz ever-present as white noise.

            A sleepy region, lush and boring and slow.

            I blink my eyes open when it is finally nighttime. Ants march on my neck and I slap them dead, hissing at the raised bumps that sting upon touch. And there is a burning in my crotch that I half-destroy with my nails before it goes down, from a red-hot to a simmering white itch.

            Then, the crunching of twigs.

            Two pairs of footsteps.

            I continue sitting, hoping I don’t look too creepy, hoping they don’t pay too much attention to me and ask if I’m okay or something caring like that.

            A woman’s voice: “…he’s not right, not right in the head.”

            Comical, cheerful, a man with a Midwestern accent: “No, maybe not, but, uh… You never know. He could be telling the truth.”

            “It’s exhausting. You know I was eating?”

            “So you’ve said.”

            “It was Subway. A tuna sandwich with red chopped onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. I got one bite in!”

            “It happens. You wrap it up for later?”

            “No, I tossed it. Five bucks, gone.”

            The bridge creaks under the weight of newcomers and two beams of light artificially illuminate a crowd of gnats spastically whirring in the air. Fuck. My hands shake rapidly and the burning in my crotch flares again, my feet tingling with a thousand pinpricks, the back of my neck flaring with the ant bites.

            The two officers are both young and muscular, in undeniable better shape than me. I become an invalid, a growth from the damp ground, a mushroom jutting from the earth. If you don’t move, they won’t see you. On goes their conversation about subs, what they like on it, and damn, I miss that sandwich, why did he call? I miss that sandwich.

            I know who they’re looking for. I know what Sylvester did.

            The girl and I make eye contact, and I note her ears, these horrible elfish assets that stick out of her head. They perk up like a wolf’s ears, hunting its prey. She approaches me with careful, cautious steps, flashlight shining at my face. I shield my eyes with a hand, squinting like some sort of feral child unattuned to brightness, unfamiliar with the sun. I must look like a madman.

            “Hi there,” she says amiably, hand on her hip as though _that’s_ not threatening, as though there’s no weapon strapped to it, jutting out of her considerably-sized thighs, “Are you Sylvester Disney’s boyfriend?”

            “Sure.”

            Wisconsin boy exhales a scoff of amusement and surprise, a harrumphing noise that blows the hairs of his mustache up.

            “What’s your name, sir?” asks the woman, extending a hand, “Why’re you sitting out here all alone? Are you hurt?”

            All I can think of is Felix. Felix, dubbed a ‘runaway.’ Felix, with his black hair, back in the apartment complex. Felix, who hasn’t said a word, who will undoubtedly live with the memories his whole life, perhaps publish a book about it under pseudonyms, _Running with Scissors_ style. Felix, who will be grilled and questioned and entirely forgotten for he has not been missing long enough, for he has not inched into even national news, because he’s not a child, but fifteen. I, somehow avoiding apprehension, despite my name, my face publicly exposed, I have been able to roam with very little confrontation, invisible as any white young adult male. I didn’t even have eyebrows, and _still_ no one found me out.

            Scot-free, right? I’m out.

            But to stay that way means living with Sylvester. To return to Felix is to risk arrest.

            Which prison is worse?

            I stare at the woman. “No, dude, I’m fine,” I say, lifting a hand dismissively and waving her off, “Just taking a breather after a walk. Just… enjoying the night.”

            The man wipes his forehead with the back of a grizzled and hairy arm, mopping sweat like a caricature. “Real nice weather to simmer in,” he comments.

            “What’s your name?” she repeats.

            Sweat goes cold on the back of my neck, the saltiness trickling into the ant bites, lemon in a wound. If I’d just had the stupid chicken nuggets, everything would be fine right now.

            “Hugh,” I say—an outburst that sounds more of a cough than anything.

            “What was that?”

            “Hugh G.,” more enunciated.

            “Don’t even play these games with me, son!”

            “Hugh G. Rection.”

            “Come with me, please,” she exhales.

            “Do I have to?” I ask, raising the silhouettes of my eyebrows.

            “Yes.”

            “How come?” I ask, squinting as she shines the flashlight in my eyes. Her partner comes over to stand beside her as I blink white spots out of my vision, the light temperature-less but sweat-inducing nonetheless, adding to the downpour that swamps my skin.

            “Because, Jeremy Pachachi, you’re under arrest for the abduction of Felix Broad.”

            My rights dribble and muffle behind the thumping in my ears; I’m going underwater.

            _That sucks, dude,_ I think, hands trembling, _that sucks_.

*

            I picture myself moving: pulling myself to shaky legs and lifting my hands as though they’re FBI and I’m a supposed terrorist, then bringing my knee to the chick’s cunt, feeling the warm softness against the firm slant of my thigh, ducking low as the man’s bullets piece the tree and splintered wood flutters out around me. Pulling the top-heavy chick down by her hair, knocking her down, stepping over her thick, plush back, and going at the dude’s gun. Then there’s running, far and fast and loud through the humus matting the warm ground, crunching twigs and leaves, soundtracking my footsteps, pulling myself up by an outstretched branch and crawling into the cavernous bulb of leaves, where I’ll sit until the leave, make my escape, find refuge somehow, push my luck further. But this isn’t a movie. Michael Bay didn’t direct this.

            I rise calmly and offer my hands to her, and she shakes her head and gently goes, “Wait, no, turn around,” so I do, and we proceed with the shackling as my heart rabbits in my throat, my gaze focused on the toe of my dirty sneaker, a centered zoning-out that I’ve always had a problem with around strangers.

            “So this is it,” I murmur. She asks what so I repeat.

            “Well, no, it’s not it,” she laughs, friendly despite my criminal repertoire. “You still have trial to stand! The kid’s home safe, too, so that should help.”

            I look over my shoulder and look at the brown flat mole over her lip, and my eyebrows hitch, eyes burning with liquidated self-pity, throat tightening. “You’re very kind,” I make out, before the inevitable tears fall, an outpouring of guilt, and so I am led into the police car, the air conditioner artificially blasting and my smell becoming palpable in the blow, outdoor to indoor, it surrounds me, the scent of nature that goes rotten in the manmade cage.

            “I try to learn the whole story of someone before I judge,” she says, exhaling when she sits down in the passenger’s seat. Through the grate, I watch her type on a laptop or something, and then murmurs into an attached hand-held speaker microphone—subject apprehended, coming back to Precinct 1 now.

            “Not a common facet of police,” I say, “Ma’am.”

            Harrumphing from our mustached driver, who then directs me to watch my mouth, you’re the one in the back.

            “What did Sylvester tell you?” I say to the woman.

            “That rich boy who called? Operator didn’t say much except to dispatch a single car to ‘placate’ him, whatever that meant, but then he’s going on and on about Jeremy P., Jeremy P., and we’ve all heard _your_ name recently—hell, that alien face came to mind like a projector at a flick. But you ain’t _that_ bad-looking, not really.”

            The strange forest fizzles out as we go down the road of civilization, of McDonald’s and Sears, of yoga studios and salons, of 24-hour gyms and discount oriental rug shops, these glowing boxes on the road, lined with intent to swallow cash, and I keep crying, thinking of how I will never see these lovely cubes providing a dollar menu again, thinking of the fact that my life will never be the same, and life has always been the same, from start to finish.

            In between broken sobs I say, “I’m in so much trouble.”

            Extending a hand to settle on the back of the passenger seat, officer bro eyes me in the rearview and says, “You best stop crying if you’re gonna survive prison.”

            “Who says he’ll be indicted?”

            “The fuckin’ kid was kidnapped!”

            “He says he ran voluntarily.”

            “Still, he was underage,” he points out, and I think of Caril Ann Fugate applying red lipstick, bent over a cracked mirror, thin lines as if it were a spider’s thread, checking her fourteen-year-old lips in a glimmering shard that frames her mouth and no other asset of her features. A dismembered child’s mouth lined fluorescently, grinning, and that spot of red on her tooth, what is that…?

            “I think it’s nice he cries—shows he’s got some feelings!” she looks at me in approval, which I can only see in my rippled peripheral, for I’m studying the glimmering sign of a hotel decorated by neon palm trees, temple aching with memories, heartbroken at those refuge homes for the transient lovers.

            “Yeah: self-pity,” scoffs Officer Bro.

            “Oh, you don’t even know what he’s done.”

            I knock my forehead against the window and see my stubbled chin in the reflection, a parabola beneath a deal for a Whopper. “If I pay,” I propose, “Can I get some Burger King?”

             “Oh, real funny.”

            “I’m hungry,” Officer She says. “That Subway got interrupted. Besides! Pre-congratulatory meal for our successes in apprehending one of Texas’s Most Wanted.”

            My eyebrows shoot up. Most Wanted? My infamy precedes me. But then again, this isn’t the wild west. People aren’t that exciting anymore. Look at me, y’all—I _did_ something. (But so did every rapist on death row, every murderer, every spiteful husband, every jilted wife.)

            They come to an agreement halfway through the line, and when they ask me what I want, I lean down and dribble snot onto my shirt, and say, “Burger and fries. And a Coke.”

            Because I’m an American, deep down, a red-blooded warrior. More than that, I’m a Texan. Sure, I hate everyone in the state, but I hate everyone in _any_ state, for that matter.

*

            I sip through the plastic straw noisily, picking up dregs of ice water and fluid barely-soda. There’s no ketchup on my fingers.

            Opposite of me sits the detective, my two apprehending officers having left the scene when transferring me. I’m in a room, walls the color of rice, sitting at one end of a plastic, fold-out table. There is a notepad, a black-ink pen, and a mayonnaise-stained burger wrapper, crumpled tissues, and the last fries of the meal scattered across the table.

            Detective Arnold Kuhn does not intrude upon my personal space. He sits with an arm slung over the table and scribbles idly with his pen cap on the page, drawing swirls that mean nothing, say nothing. Designs of the untense mind. I’m very jealous of his ease. He gets to go home soon. Sleep with his wife. The gold band on his finger squeezes his hairy knuckles. Wake up again, dress nice, and sit across from the scum of the earth like me, and probably tell all his disgusting drinking buddies about me, about every misdemeanor that he’s forced to encounter.

            Well, that’s what the misanthropic, distrusting part of me likes to think. But, well, no. That’s simply not it. He doesn’t treat me like some ground-foraging subhuman slave to my sexual instincts. He doesn’t even glare at me. His whole aura exudes good humor. There’s a slight quirk to his thin lips and he doesn’t ask me menacing questions, doesn’t shine a bulb in my face, turning it yellow and wide-eyed, demanding I talk.

            “So, Jerry,” he says, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, looking to me with his head tilted down, eyebrows raised in offering, hand outstretched with a Camel between his fingers. I take it with a trembling hand. Already my food is sitting worryingly, and this won’t help, but the friendly gesture is nothing I’ll reject when I have no one on my side. “Tell me what happened.”

            It’s casual, barely a demand, certainly recommended, but not necessary—no, not necessary.

            Do you, Jeremy Pachachi:

  1. “I ain’t telling you shit.”
  2. “I don’t think speaking without a lawyer present will bode well for me.”
  3. Confess all.



            If you guessed C, then you’re a stupid asshole. We both are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NAME REVEAL BOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
> 
> This election outcome has really put a falter in my writing. Tell me you love me to inspire me.


	23. Virgin Mary Was Tired

This is for when your cuff gets caught in the cogs of an urban evening  
For when your vision is frayed and you don't have anymore lust

—"This is For When"  
Bauhaus

* * *

 

            Here is what Detective Kuhn knows.

            Jeremy Pachachi, born September 1st, 1989, in Dallas, Texas to Paul Pachachi and Caroline Meller, was 8 pounds 2 ounces in Caroline’s soft bloated arms. (“Pachachi, what kind of name is that?” “Syrian.” “You’re Arabic, then?” “Half. Dad’s an immigrant.”) Brown hair, brown eyes. Deemed Caucasian. No distinguishing features, save for a recent lack of eyebrows.

            Peaked height at fourteen, abnormally early for a boy. At 6’1”. Handsome, but I had a hard time growing facial hair. Still do. It’s weak.

            Scoliosis, wore a brace for a year, but really less than half. I removed it in the school bathroom. In high school, my GPA was #13. Only the top 10 got featured on stage during graduation. I destroyed a wall in a rage.

            No scholarships, no clubs, sports, nothing. No honorable mentions. One recommendation letter from my English teacher. I wasn’t that good in school, though. I’ve kept the letter. It’s very kind. It sees me in the light of a perfect student, fascinated by the lenses of the world. I took up the negative ones with the most dedication.

            Dated a few girls. Never got into them. I knew I was a homosexual for a long time, I just attempted the other side. Nothing against women. I am not a misogynist. I prefer women, actually. (“I’d much prefer a female detective.” “Shit out of luck, kid.” We laugh at that, broken, disconnected.)

            My mother is still my best friend. I visit her often—or I did, before Felix came into the picture. She is a sarcastic, intelligent woman, who I love very much. Walked into high school on the first day with my hand in hers. Obsessively call her. She was no helicopter parent—just a good one. She was calm around my father, who had a hot temper, which is subsequently where I adopted mine. She hardly lost her mind, rarely yelled, often took the brunt of anger without reaction, and that stoic nature imbued guilt upon him. (“And how would your mother feel now?” “I miss her. I don’t know how she’d feel. I miss her.”)

            He died when I was twenty, unexpectedly, not because of his poor health, but because of a nasty engine and a refusal to trade out his car. I don’t know details. We didn’t see his corpse. It’s the closest thing to tragedy I’ve experienced.

            No, I did not have an abusive or disturbed childhood.

            No, I didn’t have an older lover in my formative years.

            I went to college at a state school for a year before dropping out. Majored in graphic design. Got hired at a tattoo parlor. Did that for seven repetitive years, living shitty paycheck to paycheck.

            And when did I know I was a pedophile?

            It’s a gradual thing. You find your attraction to a gender peaks at a certain age, and when you maintain a stubborn outlook of things, you do not change these opinions. As I grew, my preferences didn’t. I don’t know why.

            No, I didn’t act on it. Not until Sid Vicious died. (“That’s my cat.” I then explain to him the shot heard around the world.) The questions become accusatory. Did I rape him? Did I have sexual relations with him? Did I touch him? Yes, yeah, I did, I’m fucked, aren’t I? I don’t care, I did it, why protect myself? I’m an asshole, I’m scum. ( _Ha_ , with sweating hands, shaking legs and knees tingly as though phantom needles prick them. “Don’t care,” Burger King liquefied and inching up my throat. Scribbling in his notebook.)

            I took him without consent. We had consensual sex. I know, it can never be consensual because of his age, and perhaps that’s the only thing that got me hard. Thinking with my dick was my downfall this whole time. It seems sad to wrack this journey up to that and a lack of sexual inhibitions, but there’s nothing special about us sexual predators. Men have committed crimes with our cockheads since the beginning of time. Big deal. The term ‘pederasty’ is in the dictionary.

            No, he never said no.

            No, I did not drop him off at home, unharmed. I awoke from our home, and he was gone. But he could’ve left at any time in the latter half of our relationship, and I wouldn’t have stopped him. (“It’s called Stockholm Syndrome,” to which I duck my head shamefully.)

            Where is our home?

            Our home is an old rotted house in Alabama. A once-loved place. Yes, we went far. Yes, I took him out of state. Why do you write so hard?

            Yes, there was penetration, I said that, didn’t I? I fucking said that.

            Why him? Because he’s beautiful, don’t you see that? He’s beautiful. (Met with a look of skepticism and raised brows that insinuates I am lying, or that I am wrong, or perhaps we’re talking about two different people, but what does he know? What does a straight man know about the beauty of adolescent boys? He probably thinks I’m just some irredeemable creep. But I don’t want him to think that. Staring at his intelligent blue eyes lined with light eyelashes almost white, eyelids so pink they’re like tender meat, I want him desperately to like me.)

            I describe the bizarre, unremittingly easy abduction. I describe the almost accepting, mourning attitude of his parents, watching me take him under the messy guise I dreamt up, so out-of-it, so believing, so trusting.

            Detective Kuhn does not detect bullshit from me. He sees in me an honest exhalation, which is true to those who have not spoken after enduring hell and take their chance to expel all their baggage when a listening ear is readily available. So he says.

            (“Bad parents, huh? They easily fall under negligence if what you say is true.” I think this is a tactic to shift security in his favor. People bond over mutual accusation.)

            Yes, they were bad parents.

            But I’m worse. I hurt the child. I hit the child. They simply put him in my care.

            He writes this down with a white hand that blooms whiter at the fingertips. He is stunned by my ready confession. I am very brave and self-sacrificing. Don’t I know what people like me have to deal with in prison? I’m a sexual predator in a ring of sodomy and beatings—and I’m deemed Caucasian. I think about the varied and feeble Arabic I know, that dad never taught me, and wonder if spewing phrases at random will incite further abuse and racial tension, or insert fear at the possibility of my involvement in terrorist groups in the Middle East.

            It is Texas, after all.

            You cannot expect too much of a red state. (“No disrespect,” I clarify, “These _are_ modern times.” “No,” he concedes, “You’re right. You’re certainly right.”)

            And that’s what Detective Kuhn knows.

*

            There’s more, but you know that. You, who is judging me as I speak. I deserve it, don’t I? After all, I’ve presented myself to the public eye, and it is the decision of the viewer to make your own judgments, though I must implore you to not be too brutal, I’m a very sensitive and gentle soul.

            Detective Kuhn— _call me Arnie_ —left the room again to talk to his people, and I face one side of the slate of thick wall, wondering which one is two-way, and wondering how many people are watching me slouch over a table with cuffed hands picking at the remnants of fries. I stick my tongue out at them in a friendly notion that I think will do me well in the long run. I would very much like to be on good terms with the staff. I spend my time making faces and straining my ears for giggling, but silence stretches as long and empty as it does in classrooms, on jury duty.

            My feet feel unimaginably heavy in my boots, still muddied from the moist summer ground, and I think I’ll very much miss these hot days of heady fragrant moods. Indoors, everything is sharp and intense and precise, made by man, made to instill hard focus that strings out every bit of power from a person. Nature coddles you as it teaches you, or protects you, where shade darkens and weather affects you more than mind-strain. Here in this unnaturally geometric box lined with fluorescent lights, I am exposed.

            Yes, my feet feel heavy but my back arcs over the table in a slouch, light and airy as though my lungs flutter with cherry blossom petals, winding playfully in my chest as though on a sugary wind with every exhalation. I think I’m getting light headed. There’s a strange want in that flurry of leaves, an emptiness that wants to swallow. I want Felix right now—no, I want Esme. I want to swallow him so he can fill that space right inside my ribs, undoubtedly cavernous, so he can wrap around my heart, embryonic, and I can be filled once more.

            When Detective Kuhn comes back in he has a new stack of sheets in hand, looking very professional and important and vague as cops and doctors on TV shows handling papers. He keeps going, “Okay, alright,” over and over for a few minutes before he sits down across me and studies these papers tucked into a manila folder, held in place by a paperclip. As generic as you can get.

            “So, here’s the plan,” he says kindly, “We’re sending our forensic team to the ‘house’ and your car in the morning. We’re going to need your help acutely identifying its location, but you say you have a witness?”

            “Yeah, Jerry,” I say, the man with the shopping cart full of ducks. It sounds odd, having a witness and exposing that witness to further myself into the threshold of indictment, but in my heart, I am not guilty of anything, and though I am going to plead guilty, and I am in all sense of the human morale, I carry no shame or guilt. Because in the end, I was thinking with my dick, admittedly, but I am no monster. I am simply seeking what everyone is.

            It takes us four long hours to find the small house. We’re tired by the end of it. But they’re going to the crime scene to make sure I haven’t buried anyone beneath it. I tell them I haven’t. It’s a waste of their time. But I won’t stop them. I have nothing to hide. Let them waste the people’s money. That’s what it’s for.

            “Can I have my own cell?” I ask. It must be two AM now, or maybe not—it doesn’t matter.

            Because I have been a helpful man, they say yes.

            In prison, they treat you nicely for being polite. It doesn’t matter if you ate a baby. You’re very helpful, Jerry. Thank you for making my life easier. It’s strange, how people like Detective Kuhn don’t want to see people like me hurt. I don’t mean “people like me” in the context of rapist-kidnapper-murderers. I mean “people like me” in that I’m clean-shaven, handsome, and white. I have shaken his hand and spoken properly and he has felt my human warmth despite exuding smells of upturned dirt.

            I barely sleep, and I do not dream. After an insignificant amount of time I’m awoken from my sleep by a guard with red hair and an unfortunate splay of facial freckles across a pallid face, eyebrows orange, sticking out of his face as much as his nose. In a surprisingly boyish voice, he leads me back to the room Kuhn and I were talking in.

            Kuhn looks less thrilled with me, his calm demeanor now stiff, which I understand is a scare tactic, but I’m more offended than anything that he’s more dedicated to his work than our blossoming friendship. We really have something, you know.

            I rub sleep out of my eyes on my shoulder, hands still cuffed.

            “Now, a matter we’ve failed to discuss,” is his opening line, and he slides back into the chair across from me, but somehow the mood’s turned sour, informational, “Your roommate, Thomas Crawford.”

            A stretch of silence ensues, as though I’m expected to go, _ohhh, yeah! That guy_.

            “He was also missing the day you abducted Felix.”

            “’Abducted’ is such a crude word. You make me sound like such a _creep_.”

            “Convinced to leave with you,” he offers instead, and I’m surprised at his willingness to play along, instead of biting out, ‘cut the crap.’ “Where did he go?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “You need to walk me through the night before. When was the last time you saw him?”

            “Couple of days before I took Felix.”

            He nods and looks at me as if to say _continue_.

            “He killed my cat.”

            “What? Why?”

            “Because he’s a stupid asshole!” I yell abruptly. My voice hurts my own ears. “He’s a weird psycho who has no sense of social competence. He spends all day alone dabbling in his own fantasies which are fucking disgusting. He doesn’t care about other people, and he’s a hedonistic fuck who overindulges and overreacts! He’s boring, needs attention, and he’s one of those disconnected fucks who is capable of nothing. He garnered no income, and he just lazed around sobbing brokenly over his own ineptitude. He was _pathetic_. Taxidermy and Nazisplotation videos were his masturbation fodder of choice. Sometimes he was funny, sure, but hell was he immature, and just fucking _boring_.

            “So he deserved it when I hurt him, alright? Sometimes we got into scuffles. Nothing big. But he drove me fucking crazy! He made me nauseous. One day I kicked him because of some argument, I don’t know, he threw up on the carpet or something and I was mad because he wouldn’t open the door, he took too long to open the door. He was drunk and I was hot and he wouldn’t open the door, so I kicked him. I took a bath after that, and I went out. I came back and my cat was dead and half-shaved. I buried my cat. It was my only friend. Thomas was gone. He didn’t take his things, I don’t think… I didn’t look. But I was very upset that my cat died. That cat was the only thing I had. And I had no more to lose.”

            Nothing left to hide, why would there be?

            “Which is why you went after Felix.”

            “Yes,” I say, dropping my pounding head into my hands jointed at my thin, brown wrists.

            Outside you can hear the thrum of hard rain batter the building in hollow, echoing beats. He scribbles, writing hard, pen digging into paper.

*

            Legalities go by and my hair grows out and Felix is aging somewhere. I get an attorney but he doesn’t have to do much work because I’m pleading guilty. We make a long recollection of where I’ve taken my victim. It takes a few weeks. And eventually, the sentence comes.

            I get a minimum of five years for kidnapping, because of Texas Penal Code § 20.04, and it is deemed _first degree_ kidnapping, even though I did not intend to _terrorize_ him, you cannot call what I’ve done “terrorizing.”

            Then I get a minimum of twenty years for sexual liberation (AKA sexual assault). The definition of § 53a-70a is: “While compelling someone a person to engage in intercourse the offender, under circumstances showing an extreme indifference to human life, recklessly engages in conduct which creates a risk of death to the victim, and thereby causes serious physical injury to the victim and the victim is under 16 years old.” My judge who is white and likes my clean, neat suit from Detective Kuhn, who likes my hair cut, who likes my maleness, reads this to me in a drone. A woman would probably present this penal code in a tone of a Shakespearian monologue. But there is no sweeping emotion in his voice, but there is a superiority over the rim of his black, plastic glasses, brow cocked. The world is attuned to crime and dripping for it at the edges. Everyone wants to be better than the nightmarish scum of humanity. They build their world around people like me though. Locking their doors and scolding their children to watch the streetlights and monitor phones. Safe in their homes, with _Forensic Files_ on TV, _CSI_.

            This jury strikes me as particularly smug, or maybe all juries are, and it just seems that way because I’m the indicted and they are the free, the good people who have done what they’re told and will do what they’re told all their lives. These people who have never been in danger and never will be because they’re _precautioned_. Precautioned by media people who haven’t been in danger either, _precautioned_ by parents who have been comfortable forever, but they know this is what you do so you don’t get killed, or fucked, or hurt, because those are abstract bad things. We know they’re bad because—

            Anyway.

            My mom visits me after my sentence. Minimum twenty-five years, maximum ninety. The jury was smiling at me at that, like I was supposed to be pissing my pants or something.

            In khaki scrubs and glasses (prison-issue because I have had untreated astigmatism for a long time) she does not recognize me at first. But I see her. Her hair has gotten grayer, the skin around her face saggier, her body softer. Still, she is pretty, very pretty, her eyes bright if lined with puffy skin folds. Her hair’s back in a ponytail. She’s not crying, but I start, which gets her to start.

            We’re not divided by glass, but I embrace her and get pulled off by the shoulder by the ginger guard. I turn around and glare at him. “Let me hug my mama, man!” You cannot be too threatening with a parental pet name in your demands.

            She wraps her warm arms around me and my heart sinks in my chest. She’s wearing a sweater the color of wet sand and sugar cookies. I want nothing more than to bury my wet, red face in her shoulder and let out weeping, squeaky noises while she rubs my prominent spine.

            Though I’d gotten fatter in my decadent splurges with Esme, I am now thinner than even before, because prison food is not sexy, and prison work is cyclical and grating. The only difference between this and my old life is that now I get beaten sometimes and I talk to hipsters less.

            But I have good behavior. I tell my mom this.

            “I’ll probably get parole,” I promise her, as she eyes me with broken eyes, irises the color of lush plants, dappled with dewdrop tears. “I’ll be out and—and I’ll live with you.”

            She doesn’t say anything, but I sob out intentions of Christmas-time familial fun, cookie baking and tree decorating, her fat pet cat rolled under the plastic Christmas tree that _I’ll_ get out of the attic, batting red orbs of ornaments, Precious Moments cards on the table, I’ll buy her presents—you know I make _money_ in prison, don’t you mama? Don’t you?

            But I get prison time, because that’s how it is. That’s how it is.

*

            On Thursdays, I have group sessions with other sex offenders. A candle with the Virgin Mary on it blazes because our Hispanic group leader is Catholic. It smells like nothing, but if you inhale in the room you’d guess it smells like wet sweat and bad pussy or maybe fish. But no, that’s not the candle, that’s just us, the inmates.

            “We must not hate the world,” he insists. “But we must not love it, either. We must res- _pect_ it. It is our nurturing center.”

            _I’m an environmentalist_ , I think, and I smile to myself, but I don’t say anything; I never say anything. “The people it harvests are…” he says some inspiring shit, I don’t know, I’m too focused on this wiry kid, the other white guy in this room. His name’s Jimmy Jazz. Like the Clash song, but I have not made any further inquiries on music taste. I’ve never spoken to him. He’s homely, with big nostrils looped red perpetually, like he harbors some incessant cold. His eyes are big, ringed purple, and his mouth is an ugly, pale scrawl of thin lips. A bad mustache dots his upper lip. He’s only twenty-one, and his neck juts out of shoulders, two cords _V_ -ing above his collarbones. We’re all in beige jumpsuits now, but when I first saw him, he was in a pink one. They use pink jumpsuits as punishment. I think that’s fucked up.

            Cotton-candy pussy kitten tongue ribbon baby kiss-me pink.

            His nostrils are not the only red-rimmed holes, is all I’m saying.

            Jimmy Jazz twitches and sweats and his cheeks are always flushed. He has a greasy pseudo-mullet with remnants of yellow hair dye at the ends, his brown roots bleeding into them. He keeps it slicked back with water and tucked behind his ears. Occasionally, he’ll duck his face into his shoulder and sniff loudly and wetly.

            It makes everyone cringe. He’s always making these moist cavern noises with any orifice. He always seems wet and dripping. Except his eyes, dried and exhausted and constantly rolling back and fluttering shut when he’s tired.

            Today, Jimmy Jazz is talking about what he’s done again, as he always does. He likes to talk. He’s a pretty heinous dude, really, but he insists he did not intend to hurt, just to have a laugh. _Have a laugh_ , that’s what he always says, like he’s English or something.

            “And, and I suppose one day,” he has a stammer too, like he wasn’t already tedious enough to look at, “One day I’ll probably pick up that lavender Bible w-without sobbing, you know? Bibles… I think of ‘em a lot. They evoke strong child, uh, childhood memories.”

            No one knows what the fuck he’s talking about as he goes on to describe huddling under a yellow table with Jesus’s clasped and praying hands printed on top of it, licking the pages of Jeremiah and pissing his white shorts. But our counselor nods anyway.

            “And that red, red spot in the corner of my vision turned ravenous. It told me—told me what to do, you know. This dot, like the Japanese flag, or an alarm button… Bro…”

            He trails off and looks at his feet, and no one’s looking at him, because we’re ashamed for him. “Bro, the spot’s better now. It’s there,” he says, “But it’s going, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming, coming… Coming…”

*

            Coming, coming, cumming, cum, cumming, I’m _coming_.

            Unfulfilled dreams. They’ve given me medication, if you _can’t tell._

God, I can’t even jack off.

            My cock is limp and ugly now. I dream of sepulchers, blue thumbs, kid feet stained with charcoal, Achilles’s heels sliced by barbed wire, this blonde 70’s princess I’ve made up (her name’s Renoir), white suit jackets. I dream of Jimmy Jazz pounding his fists (clad in kidskin gloves) on a piano, I dream of seafoam lapping at open wounds, sizzling sounds like bacon on a frying pan, I dream of skinny heroin bodies hunched over a mirror, I dream of Caril Ann putting on lipstick (that’s a frequent recurring image). It all makes me hard. I have to shove my hands in my mouth and drool to stop the whimpers in the middle of the night.

            But hard as I am and try as I might, I am never _coming_.

            I like these dreams, but too frequently I am awoken from these gothic images broadcast on an 80s screen TV—the quality my brain adopts—to work. They have me serving breakfast right now. Soon, I’m going to do classes. When an opening comes. I’ve been incarcerated for three weeks, under medication for two.

            It’s cyclical and unsurprising and I think— _this_ is all? _This_ is all that happens to me for what I’ve done? And I think I’ve deserved it, really. This cycle of mundane work has been my downfall. It’s only fair it gets handed back to me, right?

            What?

            What’s wrong?

            I’ve adopted morals, is that it? I’m feeling guilty? I’ve seen the error of my ways and it’s unlike me, and disturbing. But this is how it is. You take the life you’re handed because the people have unanimously decided that that’s the way it is.

            So that’s the way it is.

            I don’t dream of Felix anymore. I try not to think about him. It sends me into a frenzy. I sweat and emote and shiver and get angry, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to need him like I do, so I block him out, or jealousy will fill me like led poisoning. His stupid parents, his stupid friends—the media—they all get to talk to him.

            He doesn’t come around. He didn’t come to court, but he offered a statement against me. It omitted his personage. It was very clinical. It didn’t matter if he’d been kind or accusatory or had written lines and lines of defamation. The outcome would be the same. The system likes the truth.

            Mom is going to visit me on the second Monday of every month.

            I don’t get any letters save for two from some local girls who watched the news. By their names and looped, effeminate handwriting on the envelopes, I peg that they’re probably love letters. I haven’t opened them. Saving them for a rainy day, I suppose.

            Women are nice like that.

            I don’t think of Felix, I don’t get letters, and I don’t get to come.

            Minimum twenty-five years… or is it forty? Or is it forever?

*

             I consider myself a very lucky dude, you know? It’s not like this is even that bad.

            After breakfast—two packages of jelly, two packages of margarine, three slices of bread, oatmeal, and a fresh orange—I am allowed into the prison courtyard, which is where I attempt to get some sun and fresh air. Prison meals are notoriously void of iron, and the vitamin D deficiency isn’t helping. I feel like I’m the only one concerned about this kind of thing. Or perhaps I revel in glowing tans because I’m a gay fuck, who knows?

            Outside, the slant of brick brackets three sides of me, and the barbed wire fences tall and looped fizzle out greyly in your vision if you squint hard enough, so I usually face it. Summer’s passed, and now the sky is a colorless slab like marble, dark, thick clouds looming overhead, promising rain as a single wimpy tree shakes under a turbulent gust.

            T___ S___ Penitentiary is a very boring prison, architecturally speaking. But in the courtyard, there is a basketball court, a tennis court, a few benches, and other athletic options. Because I’m _good_ , and do not stab anyone, and do not complain, and do not _talk_ , and when I do talk I am very polite and gentle, I am allowed to sit and read today. But most of the time I’m required to be more productive.

            Of all people, Lionel was the one who sent me the book. Pinball Wizard Lionel, with his fat thumbs and gunmetal trunk.

            “And now the Room, like a great ship, put out to sea. Higher the waves, wider the horizons, rarer, more perilous, the cargo. In their strange world of childhood, of action in inaction, as in the waking dream of opium eaters, to stay becalmed could be as dangerous as to advance at breakneck speed.”

            The siblings have made this world for themselves, you see—

            Beside my head, a ball whizzes past and smacks against the wall of the prison with a resounding noise, like a hand upon skin. No sensation of airspeed velocity rattles against me, nor am I hit, but my right cheek goes tingly and numb with fear at having my head blown off by someone’s violent game of wallball. But I don’t jump, my bones are too liquid to jump, my mind’s too slow on all these white tablets.

            Jimmy Jazz approaches me, the ball successfully back in his hands. He bounces it rhythmically against the ground, victorious.

            “Sorry,” he says. Again, he’s all wet, sniffling and sweating even more than usual, face almost purple with the strain as if undergoing asphyxiation.

            I don’t say anything, just close my book in my hands, losing my page.

            “What’s that?” he asks, craning his chicken neck to peer at the cover. I don’t dare hand it to him, in fear that the fuck will snatch it and go, like this Hispanic guy did to this black guy, when the black guy handed him a Polaroid of his girlfriend—god knows WHY—and the Hispanic guy eventually got his ass beat. The Polaroid was found with a mysterious white stain on it.

            “ _The Holy Terrors_ ,” I say, “by Jean Cocteau.”

            His pale lips blow out in a pout. Charm is almost exuded with the action. Almost.

            “Guys in glasses, y’all are so smart.”

            I sit there. “Yeah,” I offer shortly, my hands atop my book. He sits down next to me, and looks at me seriously. I keep my eyes trained on my hands, my brown eyes hidden behind my glasses. Shy avoidance.

            But he isn’t moving. He just sits there, making his wet noises, sweating and dribbling the ball like a metronome.

            “When I was younger, maybe twelve or thirteen, my stepfather sat me down, and told me, ‘son, I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. I want you to remember what I say, so when you’re older, so when you’re a father, you’ll be able to share it with your children. Never forget this…’ But I think it applies to you just as much.”

            A pause. He looks up and blinks as a raindrop, one of the first cold rains of the year, splatters against his cheek.

            “What?” I implore.

            “I wish I could tell you what it was, but I forgot what he said.”

            God, this kid is stupid.

*

            Days crawl here. In group, Jimmy Jazz is absent. He went vampire on the guard, somehow getting on top of him and chewing the flesh of his neck. Those yellow teeth of his went red with blood and now the guard wears a big gauze patch on his neck secured with masking tape. He is visibly more pissed. He shit-talks _me_ , even. I don’t deserve that.

            I’m so good.

            Still I do not talk at the meetings. Still I do not make ‘any progress.’ Still I am swallowing pills with milk, breakfast milk, 2%, which is making me bigger. I like to credit my lack of communication to it, feeling ‘swamped’ but ‘controlled,’ and ‘well-behaved.’ “It is hard to be verbose when you’re so numb, sir, you do understand, don’t you?” I said after group one day.

            And my counselor smiled and put a brown hand on my shoulder and squeezed hard, too hard, the skin between my clavicle and collarbone pinched. But I didn’t wince. “When you’re ready, you’re ready,” he said, like ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ or ‘when life gives you lemons.’

            Without Jimmy Jazz, things go dull. We’re sitting, and I’m watching the Virgin Mary weep beautifully, a crystalline teardrop dripping over the white pulp of her porcelain cheek, and then three cops come in the room, and we’re all like oh shit.

            And they’re all like, “Jeremy Pachachi?” and I’m like yeah that’s me, and they’re like yeah, we need to question you, and I’m like why and they’re like Thomas Crawford was found dead today and my penis is like trickling piss and staining my khaki scrubs obviously in a dark patch like a rain puddle and that is my plea of guilt. Won’t even be wearing khaki colors much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter gave me clinical DEPRESSION. What a sad life, dude. What a sad life.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for feedback. This is inching toward the major denouement. I'm so sappy. But it is almost completed. To everyone who has read even a sentence of it, I thank you.


	24. Malicious Intention

Favor some  
Way too young  
Slave to none  
Way too young

—"Goodbye Angels"  
Red Hot Chili Peppers

* * *

 

            “Name?”

            “Arnold Kuhn.”

            “Occupation?”

            “Detective, Walker County.”

            “How long?”

            “Two months.”

            “I want to point your attention to August 14th, 2016. Did you happen to know Jeremy Pachachi?”

            “Yes sir.”

            “Did you happen to know him prior to that?”

            “No sir.”

            “Did you know at that time and do you know at this time what his occupation was?”

            “Yes, I did.”

            “What was that?”

            “He was a tattoo artist.”

            “And do you know what he did a decade—pardon me—nine years prior?”

            “…No sir?”

            “He was a criminal justice student. That’s all I have.”

            There is a five-minute recess. I am then called to the stand. It’s strange, viewing all my opponents. They’re all so normal. Sloped chins and glasses, clearing their throats, one woman clacking on a typewriter loudly as I raise my right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me god. I do.

            Normal people dictating normal people. I’m normal now, by the way. My dick never gets hard anymore, not even when I’m thinking of cute boys with slender wrists. Before this second trial, I had some lady attach a ring to my penis, show me images of borderline child pornography, and was very impressed by my progress when I failed to get hard. Dumb bitch doesn’t know it’s a result of the splinter wound in my cock finally infected, burning with itchiness the way Sylvester called the cops on me. I wonder if he has some burning sensation in his sphincter now as well. I feel like he should. It’s only fair, I think.

            Unfortunately, that does me little good in this case. Nothing pedophilic in my relations with Thomas.

            I take my seat. Persecution begins again, his oiled black hair slick and curling behind his ears. Light from a window above the courtroom’s house spills canary-yellow over his head. A reflection blooms, bouncing off the hair gel—a tinny halo seems to loop about his head. But this is only an illusion of the eye. Bastard’s a lawyer, after all.

            They discuss the date of the apprehension, _was_ it the fourteenth? It doesn’t quite matter, it may as well have been, yes, the fourteenth or the thirteenth—it was past midnight, so the fourteenth.

            “When Officer McKinley and Officer O’Malley approached you, you were sitting outside, yes?”

            “Haven’t we gone over this before?” I ask exhaustedly, spreading my hands in reference to the first date with Felix.

            “Answer the question, sir.”

            I answer the _question_. _Sir_.

            “Yes sir.”

            “And when they approached you, who spoke to you first?”

            “I don’t remember. One of them.”

            We detail what you already know under a stuttering memory and constant recollection of my first court date, and I am just getting angrier and angrier. These people are pissing me off, with their open wet mouths and their sensibility designated sensible because there is _good_ and _bad_. Am I supposed to realize that I’ll improve myself under the direction of a manmade God and these slack-jawed idiots more fit for a sit-com’s chortling audience than designators of human life? I don’t just mean the jury. The cops standing spread-legged, hands clasped in front of their crotches; the persecution attorney smirking proudly at me, glowering like a punished child made to sit in the corner of the room.

            This is exactly what I deserve, isn’t it? This is punishment for straying from my boundaries. ( _No_ , you say, _this is punishment for murder_. I rest my case.)

            “Were your rights read by the arresting officer?”

            “No.”

            Lying under oath is pointless when you didn’t the first time. But it makes me feel smug, like a little kid who’s getting away with something, because while I’m taking stand, no one argues just yet. We just reiterate. Circles and circles of events. People love to hear the details when someone actually does something for once.

            Anyway. We go through the arresting process again for the new jury, god knows why. Typewriting echoes my words tap for tap. I kind of like that—well, honestly, I really like it. I like being ingrained in something palpable. That report will last, as will the newspapers. As will the TV reports. As will the stories of the witnesses around Thanksgiving dinner—which is in two days—as will their proud memories when they deign me guilty, even though I am pleading guilty.

            I want to slap my hands down and yell, I KILLED THOMAS CRAWFORD, I DID, AND BONDURANT “BONNIE” MORRIS, NOW LET ME GO TO SLEEP, FOREVER AND EVER. But that’s not polite.

            And when discussing murder, it is very important to be polite.

            “At any point in this incident, did anyone read to you your Miranda rights?”

            “Yes.”

            “Not by the arresting officer?”

            “No.”

            “By his partner?”

            “Yes.”

            “Wouldn’t that be the arresting officer?”

            I smile bitterly, “ _Yes_ ,” I say slowly, “I suppose so.”

            Over and over it goes. The jury is made of fat Texans with pinhole eyes stuck in the jiggling flesh of their faces. They glare at me perpetually, eyes shadowed by their lumpy foreheads, like rabid bulldogs, turning them half-mast. They’re irreversible pigs.

            “Objection,” says persecution calmly, standing to his feet. The pigs wriggle excitedly in their trough. “He’s stalling, for whatever reason, and wasting these—”

            “Overruled.”

            On the topic of Thomas, I talk. I talk of the date, the location, how it was done, my intentions, my mind, where was it when I did it, how did I get there, did Felix Broad see? Did Felix Broad know? What was his reaction? Did he assist you? Did you bribe him to keep him quiet? All about Felix, oh he’s so special, isn’t he?

            “Why did you do it?”

            “Why?” I repeat, “ _Why_? You say it so dramatically, like I’m some sexual psychopath thriving off of blood-drinking and giggling in a flesh suit. But shit, man, he killed my cat. That’s all. Sure, he was an obnoxious piece of shit, but that doesn’t warrant death. I’m not some guillotine-mad queen. But who’s gonna defend my cat? Only me. Little pussy deserves some retribution, don’t you think? I’m like Liam Neeson in Taken, dude. Just because my child’s not human, is it of any less worth? He was my friend and child, more than a pet,” the eyerolling irritates me. What am I supposed to do? My jury is probably made up of hunters. I laugh in defeat, slap a hand on my knee. “Anyway. Go vegan.”

*

            The guy who found Thomas is called to the stand, a white guy with brown, thinning hair and puppyish eyes, a husband, a father of three—who are scarred now because of the horrors they’ve witnessed awash on the shore.

            There are wrinkles climbing up his head. I count them, scroll down his head, and count them back up again. That is how bored I am with his weepy recollection of taking his children to the lake to swim, his three beautiful daughters that _this man_ (me) would undoubtedly have taken advantage of too, had he had the chance. I roll my eyes.

            “I’m not interested in your diddly dumbass little kids,” I mumble under my hand. A quiet stir, but no shock emanates from the courtroom.

            A demand for order in the court.

            My judge, also a white guy because I’ve “lucked out,” tells boatowner joe that this has no relevance, and to please keep his personal vendetta at bay.

            “And when was the body found?”

            “I don’t know the exact time, but it was sometime in the early afternoon.”

            I start humming “Golden Afternoon” from _Alice in Wonderland_ , which pisses some people off. I am told again to harbor my disruptions. I have to slap a hand over my mouth, I’m giggling so much. A photographer sneaks my photo as I’m laughing and my smiling eyes turn up to the lens. She looks at the screen proudly. I hook both fingers on either side of my mouth and pull, gritting my teeth. She takes more photos, so I make more faces, until she’s ushered out of the way. I have been on very good terms with the paparazzi—no hiding my face, no head ducked. I am guilty but I am not trying to hide it.

            “…and Caitlyn came crying, ‘daddy, daddy,’ into my arms…”

            “CUTE,” I yell, hands cupped around my mouth. I am again hushed, again warned. A police officer steps closer to me. The veins in his brown hand are stark and lined with potential. I lean over and whisper to him, “Poor Caitlyn. Did you hear? She cried, ‘daddy,’ all the way into his arms.”

            He does not look at me, but he and I both know that he is intently hiding a smile if those apple-round cheek bones raised high are anything to go by.

“I looked up and I saw the body, and I swear, in that moment, I felt my heart stop.”

I grin a white-toothed grin and peer up, prowling low with a slouch, head tilted curiously, “ _Daddy_.”

The police officer stays unsmiling, but I know he’s on my side, and I want to hold his hand lovingly.

“So I called the police on my iPhone, and they came in about twenty minutes, and in that long time I was sat there shielding my kids from the body, but they were all peeking over the boat.”

I hope very much that one of them grows up with necrophilia.

*

            My thoughts are poison. Every admission of terror, every accusation, every testimony makes me smirk, makes me crack jokes, makes me hum. I do not care a bit for Thomas Crawford, for I am not Thomas Crawford, I am Jeremy Pachachi. I am not Felix Broad, I am Jeremy Pachahi, I am not Esme Blanchet, nor am I Sylvester Disney, nor am I Bonnie or Bunny Morris, nor am I my mother or my father, I am Jeremy Pachachi. And I have made myself in this way, and I do not care. For I’ve brought about camaraderie in the normal world. (Yes, normal, I am very fascinated by normal lately. They are anything but.) People flock to disaster. In their shared hatred, they will always have discussion. This is not a critique. I have never loved anything more than shit-talking people.

            A forensic scientist presents gruesome panels of my dirty work. The entrance wound in the forehead—I have such lovely aim—white skinned curdled purple like rice pudding and blackberry blood.

            They identify the shotgun, and the bullet, and the medical examiner asks me in a low country drawl, “And where did you obtain the weapon?”

            And something in me slides clear out of the toxic waste of my brain. I feel a very strange clenching in my chest, like the cherry blossom petals of my lungs not too long ago. I have an undeniably strong desire to protect Leonard. He gave me a gun and a book, and he gave me weekend shows, he gave me silence. He is perhaps the only one who can threaten me. He seems so wise.

            “I can’t recall,” I say.

            “It just showed up in your hands one day?”

            “I can’t recall.”

            “Where did you find it? Was it in your car? It just—poof!—appeared one day?”

            “I can’t recall.”

            This is the first time I’ve brought upon unclearness in the court. Now they’ll have to scrub the black smudge off the puzzle piece to complete it. But I’ve caked it on rather heavily, like a Texan woman’s eyeshadow.

            I like this small shred of power. It’s something I’ve been stripped of long ago, after all.

            Leonard will be my secret. Tucked away in me. And I will clench it in my fist. _No_ , I think, _you’ll get nothing from me!_ It is a selfless and martyring act. At least to me.

*

            Persecution calls Felix Broad to the stand.

            There he goes, swaggering on those coltish legs to the stand. He is not as beautiful as he used to be. Like me, he now dons glasses. His legs are less defined, filling out and flattening in the back, no bend at the knee, no stark hamstrings to push back. He also slouches when he walks, either an admission of a lack of confidence or exhaustion from all the media attention. I don’t blame him. I’m feeling the same weight, too.

            He will not look me in the eye, but I’m staring at him. Our glasses are barriers. I take mine off, set them on the table in front of me, take a sip of water.

            Yes, I still love him. He’s wearing a white button-up shirt tucked into black pants. He is so slim, still, that his bones jut out of the cloth, even though the shirt is too big for him, billowing around the arms, contrasting to the wimpy tree-branch wrist of his. He has never explained what made him leave that day, besides a feeling of suffocation, and having grown tiresome of the isolation. No incident in particular eschewed him out with haste. He simply began to walk through the field of haywire poppies and junipers (was that it? I am beginning to forget) to the real world once more.

            Now he is here again, to recall the Unexciting Downfall of Thomas Crawford.

            I wonder if he’ll tell people he laughed with his fingers plugged in his ears.

            Yes, he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. His voice, void of the French accent that’s only the shadow of his initial appeal, goes monotone and really nonplussed, like he’s entirely forgotten the incident—such a small, harmless word—or he’s attending a seminar about the benefits of double-knotting your shoelaces.

            A lot of “written testimony” and “defamation” and “permitted under age 17” and “declaration” and “deposition” words are blathered and we’ve all heard them before. This mandatory shit goes on for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, for time becomes thick and mute here, and then Felix begins to speak.

            “Mr. Broad,” says persecution, “You were with Jeremy Pachachi at the time of Thomas Crawford’s murder?”

            He picks a scab on his pointer finger, or maybe a hangnail. “Yeah.”

            “Can you recall the chain of events that led to his murder?”

            He looks up at me, head tilted down over his glasses, and then grins, “What he said.”

            “Please, Mr. Broad, I know this is a tedious process, but try to conduct yourself in a professional manner.”

            “Mm,” he agrees, “Yes, I was with Jeremy in the car.”

            I hate the way he says my name. It makes my blood boil— _Germy_.

            “I don’t remember the time. It was either late night or early morning, perhaps lingering around midnight. He had been texting Thomas to meet him, like he said, on his phone, under an app that made his number all weird and, you know, hid his identity behind it.”

            “Can you remember the name of the application?”

            “No.”

            But then again, I love him. He maintains this bullshit app thing. No one needs to know about Bonnie.

            “And can you remember what he did with the phone?”

            “Threw it in the lake.”

            “Right.”

            “Thomas was at the pier when I got out of the car.”

            “Did you recognize this man?”

            “Yeah, he lived in our apartment complex. And Jeremy talked about him a lot, very negatively.”

            “How so?”

            “He was like, ‘my roommate Thomas is a stupid asshole.’”

            I snort.

            “And did he ever explicitly share his intentions to murder him?”

            “Always.”

            “And you knew that, going to Lake Conroe, that it would happen that night?”

            “Well, I had no way of _knowing_ that.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Thomas might have been stupid enough to show up, and he might have not been. But I knew Jeremy’s intentions were, that night, to kill him. They always were, this was just an active motion to speed up the process. Get it done with.”

            “Did you prevent him from grabbing the weapon?”

            “No sir.”

            “Did you try to persuade him by word not to do it?”

            “No sir.”

            “Did you try to stop Jeremy in any way?”

            “No sir.”

            “Why?”

            He exhales, and looks down at a sheet of paper. “I was fearful of my own life. Had I attempted to stop him, perhaps he would have hurt me, too. I _am_ half his age, after all.”

            Disapproving murmurs echo and burn my temper like a bruise being pressed on.

            “Would you say you acted out of selfishness, then?”

            He shifts uncomfortably, and directs his line of sight to persecution, and mumbles, “I acted out of self-preservation. Hell, I hardly ‘acted’ at all.”

            “At any previous time, had he threatened you lethally with the shotgun?”

            “No sir.”

            “Did you know it was loaded?”

            “Yes sir.”

            “And you knew what he was going to do?”

            Exasperatedly: “ _Yes_.”

            “Very well. And then what happened, after you saw Thomas at the dock?”

            “Well, we got out of the car…”

            “We?”

            “Jeremy and I. We got out of the car, him with his shotgun, and we walked up to him. He was facing the water. We didn’t close the car doors, so he couldn’t hear us.”

            “Was this planned? The silence?”

            “No sir. I suppose we,” he meets my eyes, “had some sort of unspoken collaboration in the nature of our silence.”

            “We walked up slowly, and silently. But by the time he turned around, Jeremy had already levelled the shotgun to his forehead.”

            Sliding a hand through his oily hair, the man, with speculative pacing, mumbles, “And did you, a hostage of a very unstable man, in the presence of another possible victim, feel _any_ inclination at all to help this man?”

            Felix laughs humorlessly, and arches his neck back to look up at the judge. “Is he for real?”

            Persecution says with that smug casualness of the supposedly not accusatory, “Just a simple question.”

            “Are you suggesting I played a role in the murder?”

            “I don’t know,” he says, “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

            “This is bullshit,” Felix says. “I didn’t fucking kill Thomas.”

            “Can you prove you weren’t an accomplice, though?”

            He gesticulates at me, “Are you fucking kidding? His name’s Jeremy! The guy’s Thomas! Tom and Jerry, there’s your proof! They were destined to kill each other, man.”

            This arouses laughter from the jury, but I am unamused. It’s a joke made way too many a time. I sit with my fingers intertwined beneath my chin, and when he laughs at his own joke, looks at me with creases in his eyes, my heartbeat doesn’t flare up, nor does it slow.

            Perhaps we’re done here.

*

            A few days are spent with Felix squirming, trying to prove his innocence. It’s really strange, how much easier it is to admit to crimes. People love to stamp labels of badness on the divergent of the species. Felix is adamant though, and comes out stronger. I have to testify in his favor, and eventually, persecution is chastised by the judge one too many times. The shotgun is all me, the body is all me. Felix’s only crime was not spilling the entirety of it.

            He says that, during the healing process, the lieu of murder mentions was only a blip in some protective memory, some PTSD he couldn’t dispel just then, once again, for self-preservation. But I like to think that it was for my benefit alone.

            People seem more interested in him. A headline that I keep in my cell, from a local paper, _the Houstonian_ , reads “Victim Made His Own,” until the matter went to rest. He was never fully under legal persecution, but the speculation was high. He came out innocent, of course, because he’s a beautiful child, and though he’s rather snide in his attitude, he is white and small and friendly. When he descended the court stairs the buzzing roar of reporters was a noise of admiration and curiosity. Not like mine, when they’re yelling and screaming and all the negativity is pinpointed and precise, like a wasp’s stinger.

            When I am deemed guilty, for I plead so, people are not surprised, but the air is of disgust, as it always is. In my atmosphere, a purplish headache blooms like a nasty rose already curling brown at the petals. In my atmosphere, my doom is more prominent than the previous grey walls of stability. It is a solemn, grim thing. But it is something.

            I wish I could be like the dramatics—I wish I could experience a rainbow of emotions rather than a stretch of nothing and a pugnacious red (that being lust or anger, depending on the shade). It should be in my blood, for I am Texan, after all.

            The judge goes with the territory. I suppose he didn’t appreciate me calling him ‘sir daddy’ for the second half of the trial, because he gives me life. What can you do? It’s Texas. They see red just like I do. We’re bred angry, intent on punishment, punished our whole lives. Who the _fuck_ would come here by choice, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know shit about the Texan legal system, as you can see here. Also, half of this is paraphrased from Ted Bundy's court trial. Also, this will become a reality if I don't get a new roommate soon. And I thought I disliked Thomas.
> 
> This is coming to a close, as I keep saying, but I still can't thank you all enough. It means so much to me that I've had such kind support and I hope you all enjoy it, and have fun reading it. I live to entertain.


	25. Limited

This is the end  
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end  
Of everything that stands, the end  
No safety or surprise, the end  
I'll never look into your eyes...again.

—"The End"  
The Doors

* * *

 

            Don’t get sick in prison.

            The infirmary is reserved for people with HIV or Hepatitis C, or people with vomiting and diarrhea. You got a cold? Suck it up, dude. No one’s here to baby you.

            No one but Jimmy, my new cellmate. Usually, they’d quarantine people like me, if only I was puking a little more, if only I was shitting my asshole out a little more, if only I was undergoing heroin-withdrawal levels of diarrhea.

            But it’s the flu, nothing more, even though I’m _vaccinated_.

            I throb in my bed after group—this time called “anger management.” I have a different array of people, because I am no longer on “low custody.” Now I’m inching to close custody, but only for now. Lots of the inmates have advised me on how close to parole I’ll get, if only I behave. Because there is worse than me. Still, I miss the virgin Mary and the weeping group of sex offenders and wife beaters.

            And I definitely miss my old, quiet cellmates entirely concerned with minding their own damn business, perfectly content with staying silent and politely muttering only when spoken to. Chit-chat and small talk don’t exist there. Because there, we have all decided to abandon that politeness, because what’s there to maintain? Of course, the guards appreciate it, when they’re not hurting us.

            They still have their humanity, right?

            A fever eats at me and warms my thighs that stick together hot and slicked with sweat, a new sensation when wearing a jumpsuit. It’s very hot in the prison, and a cockroach clambers madly over the ceiling, circling blindly. Enough to drive you crazy, if the natural world wasn’t so damn boring to you already.

            Leonard keeps sending books. I love him. The prison library has some picks, but it’s airplane literature or the biographies of classic authors. Someone’s checked out Thomas Mann’s diaries, which makes me throb with anticipation.

            Isn’t it lovely to look forward to something? He was in love with his son, Klaus, and described his naked body. I don’t know how they let that in here. But it makes me wanna rip my cock off with desire.

            A lot of the convicts are more well-educated than I’d imagined. Not particularly verbose, but in group, sitting with one Cajun-sounding kingpin of meth, his cheeks hollowed and teeth rotted thin like acid spilled over bone, he muttered, “I don’t get why people act like acts of isolated murders are so shockin’, gotta craft that fake sympathy an’ click their tongues an’ shake they heads, but people’s dyin’ everyday? Jus’ cause one was subject to murder, don’t mean they ain’t subject to gettin’ hit by a car? How many candlelight vigils are there for car crash victims, huh?” He picked at a red scab and lifted it to reveal a brown spot of soft flesh beneath, like a bruise on a rotten apple, “What’s one less person, and why’s it matter if they ain’t been crucified?”

            So we get on.

            Sometimes there’s issues, but those are—again—isolated events, and it arouses no tenderness for the most of us.

            Jimmy Jazz, though, is a special case. A very particular kind of stupid. I think I got eschewed in with him because my behavior’s too good for anything physical, but I have this smug demeanor, a walk of pompousness, like I’m educated or at least proud that I’m autodidactic.

            Not necessarily purposeful, but I’m not going to be _demure_ in any case.

            Jimmy Jazz is a fucking sicko, let’s get that straight.

            As the fever surges in me and beads warm sweat, dappled on my forehead dewdrops, the weird kid kneels by his bed with his arms crossed over his chest in an ‘X’ and hums lowly, “Satan, please, heal my friend and neighbor.”

            Weakly, with the height of delirium sucking the energy out of me, I say, “We’re not friends.”

            “He’s weak, dying, and he will not grant me with his spit, so we shall not die together.”

            I sit up on an elbow and mutter to a guard, who’d earlier been talking to me about his Christmas dinner of microwaved eggrolls, since his girlfriend was seeing her parents who allegedly hate him, “Tell him to stop.”

            “Knock it off, give him a rest,” he says.

            “You take orders from the imprisoned man!” he shrieks, arm outstretched, “The irony!”

            It’s hard to watch without wincing, in his strife to be ‘different.’ I don’t know what he’s trying to achieve, but it isn’t an asset of normal disorders. It’s that warped mindset kids usually have when attempting to look mad. And that mediocre language…

            What?

            “ _The irony!_ ”

            “If you don’t shut up, I won’t sneeze in your mouth,” I say to him, one way to get him to comply. He’s too much of a pussy to kill himself actively, but I think he’ll let himself die. He’s certainly fine with witnessing it.

            Squirming on his bed with incessant and childish distaste, he starts humming to himself. Jimmy Jazz, unlike all convicts, is a bundle of energetic noise undeterred by punishment. Strangely fearful of getting caught, he cowers when guards approach, but remains unflinching when beaten, when sentenced. He does not stop when I tell him to. He goes on and on, singing and humming, jerking and moving and sniffing, laughing dumbly at nothing, sharing mundane stories of irrelevance, never talking about the only interesting facet of him—the horrible ones.

            How do you bring that up casually, though? _So, about your baby sister in the cardboard box_ …

            Fuck, I don’t want to set the wildcat off. Kid’s nails are too long for my liking.

            As he makes his noise like a trapped wasp, I open my book back up, eyes half-mast with illness, weak and heavy-limbed. I barely read, reddened eyes too heavy to keep open, but there are clips I absorb as my head pounds with sugar and the ruthless press of knuckles.

            “…the burning chagrin of a betrayed lover.”

            “—a little candy, not a bad candy, I think—”

            “…to the epic of her malady.”

            Coughing into my hand, body fully throbbing, reddened and weighted on the mattress now dampened with my sweat, I roll onto my side and place the novel down on the floor, its pages leaving licks of sensation that buzz on my moistened hand, and I peer over at Jimmy Jazz who’s watching me with big raccoonish eyes and a crooked grin.

            I blink a few times and read the title, again and again, an unfinished thing, written in purple child’s crayon: _The Enchanter_. And I think to myself, that this is girlchild is a seductress, a very strange little thing, and her intentions are as animalistic and basic as us all, and I do not see her as a victim.

            Rolling onto my side, listening to Jimmy click and make noise, I stare at the wall, and think strange thoughts of my baby, my beloved, spitting long lines of blood into my open mouth, and then it’s not me, because I cannot have him, and then I am angry, red again, and that is when I begin to shake. And I’m desperate to know what he’s doing right now. I cough loudly a few times, and it rattles my ribcage that grows thorns.

            It’s very strange, how jealousy is wrung out of me this quickly, perhaps in time with the outpouring from my skin, my hair damp with it. But the very theory, the mental image, of Esme caught with his skinny legs spread, blonde hair tousled and thrown back while, like his name sake, mid-coitus with some other man—or worse, a girl—makes my stomach wrap around black rocks and clench until my heart pounds relentlessly at the doorway of my chest.

            It is the most I’ve felt since he left. Shit, ever since Sylvester played his strange gaslighting game, telling me Esme was dead the whole time, I’ve been drifting. It’s detrimental to your blood pressure balance, when your only impassions are made from intentions of killing someone. I’d like to wrap my hands around this phantom man/girl’s neck and push into a panting, moaning throat, cutting off noise. I’d like to shove his unmoving face into the hard and unforgiving ground and make him eat soil he’d get buried in.

            As my body thrums and the circumstantial chatterbox Jimmy Jazz goes on and on, practically scatting his thoughts regarding the graffiti on the wall, the first twinge of my cock comes back to life since the day of my arrest, violence in my heart, deliciously heady and ruinously sadistic.

*

            Once again, I am shown near-pornographic images of kids with a ring around my cock and either because of the malady or the insomnia birthed from Jimmy Jazz’s chirping, I do not harden. Or maybe the kids are just ugly. When you’ve had the best, nothing can come close. Esme made all lovely children obsolete. Photos of knobby kneed children at the beach, prominent genitals in speedos—it’s very off-putting. There’s something creepy about milky skin stretched over ribs, extended bellies not yet flattened from growth, underdeveloped teeth short in their heads. I feel like attending sexually to them would be tampering with a tadpole.

            This pleases my doctor, who thinks I’ve been making progress with my group sessions.

            But then, I just don’t care for big heads balancing on a scrawny neck any more, for they are too reminiscent of Jimmy. Babyish skin, pallid and soft, Johnson & Johnson’s, too reminiscent of Thomas. Fair, wispy hair, the fullness of a foxtail, too reminiscent of Sylvester.

            Leave it to the worst of the world to suck the joy in life from each other. Is that what prison’s ideology is crafted from? But then, who really can stand _anyone_ in close-quarters? I never found the dormitory in college all that liberating.

            “It seems you’ve either developed an aversion to children,” he says, “Or perhaps some sort of asexuality. Wonderful progress you’ve made, really!”

            As if this celebrated impotency will boost my ego.

            I want to shake him by the arms and say, “I got a splinter in my dick and it fucked me up, man! I’m Jake fucking Barnes, dude!” But I don’t.

            He removes my cock ring and notes my lack of arousal on his laptop with a perfunctory nod.

            I’m led back to my cell, where I sit insouciantly, wiping my nose on my hand, leaving behind snail slime smears, because I finally begin to leak, the cold beginning to dissipate.

*

            One night, the cricket in the bed opposite me convulses violently and kicks the sheets, and the inmates down the hall bark angrily at him to get him to shut the fuck up. He growls back like a wild animal, and I ball up my snot-covered Kleenex and throw it at him. He takes the tissue and plops it in his mouth, sucking loudly. The stupid fucking leech won’t give it a rest.

            “Jimmy,” I hiss, “Stop. You’re gonna get hurt.”

            He rolls on his side and stares at me with amber eyes. Opening his mouth, the tissue rolls out of his mouth. “Why should you care?”

            I rest my cheek on my fist, “I don’t. I just want some fucking sleep.”

            “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he goes on, and on, and an inmate down the lane, a big growly guy with a senorita tattoo on his bicep yells, “Shut your fuckin’ mouth!”

            “ _Nooo_!” he whines, babyish.

            Pulling myself out of the bed, I approach him, and he shrieks like a wild puppy and curls in on himself. I sit beside him and pull his head into my lap, stroking his pimply scalp, and I coo with all the kindness I can muster, making my voice dispel its monotony and lilt softly. “Why’re you making a scene? Can’t you sleep? What’s itching you?”

            “If I sleep, I’ll have nightmares.”

            “So? They’re not real. You’ll be okay in the morning.”

            “No, no I won’t!”

            “Well, you won’t if you keep up the racket.”

            He blinks at me and whispers, “I can’t stop thinking about fishing her out of the box. Her skin was purple! Purple, purple.”

            “You know where you could never sleep and make all your noise, where no one would yell at you, where no one would hurt you?”

            “Where?”

            “Isolation.”

            “ _Nooo_!” he wails again, loud and piercing. I hush him as a guard’s footsteps echo closer.

            “Okay, okay. Can’t you dream of other things?”

            “I think of nothing else, Jerry,” he says, eyes fluttering shut while I pick a particularly large and wet boil with my short nail, erupting pus, and he purrs. Then he opens one golden eye and goes, “Lullabies guarantee sweet dreams, don’t they?”

            “I don’t know any lullabies,” disgust creeps through me as I cradle this manchild. My arms twinge with anger, the undeniable need to push him on the ground and curb stomp him or something. I just want to fucking sleep.

            “Don’t you have anything?”

            I bite my lip, think of the prospect of sleep, think of throbbing with my fever dreams, my favorite kind of escape save for the pile of books, and exhale, all this fairy dust and sleep settling in me as Jimmy squirms.

            “… _Riders on the storm_ ,” I sing. “ _Into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown_ …”

            His eyelids flutter shortly, and I take deep, in between breaths to stifle laughter. Either from delirium or joviality. I snort up more snot and go on, “ _There’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad._ ”

            His small chest heaves with sleep, finally, and I move to my cot, expecting applause for my performance, and though I have none, I grin in my bed, face warm, armpits moist, thinking I’m Jim Morrison.

            The morning sun inches through our single window, grey at five in the morning, bright enough to incite the prison’s lights to their fluorescent and unforgiving life. My throat is burning and hot, but I don’t shake anymore, and my nose is not plugged, but wet, a mustache of snot lining my upper lip.

            I turn on my side and see Jimmy on the toilet, watching me intensely, like a cat.

            “Stop that,” I say weakly, my breath rotten and hurt, barely making noise.

            “Stop what?” he challenges, controlled and unfriendly, and unlike Jimmy Jazz.

            I get up and do not argue and do not talk anymore, brushing my teeth while Jimmy plops out a deuce loudly and wipes himself. I cannot taste my toothpaste and my hand works mechanically. I’m harboring my murderous intentions, because the little shit is asking for a loosened tooth and a guillotined neck. After all I did for him.

            Roommates, marriage, family—a quagmire of familiarity, your glorious partner turning into a behemoth with all that poison seeping into you. I may understand now why Esme left. He did not hate me—but the suffocation of my presence was as intolerable as the suffocation of anyone’s. Though he did not show it often, that forced communion must have worn him down.

            Yes. That’s it.

            Flushing the toilet, Jimmy pulls himself up and approaches me as our room is unlocked and the door slides open. I follow out with dreaded expectancy of routine, dogged and trudging. But Jimmy is too close, and too quiet.

            I am patted down, I am moved out. Still, silence save for footsteps behind me.

            I look over my shoulder and see his sallow, hateful face, pinched lips and flared nostrils infuriated and infuriating, that insufferableness of the kid you hate getting up in your face. I blurt, “What?”

            A guard tells me to pipe down, his fingers wrapped around my arm.

            Jimmy keeps glowering, arms cuffed behind his back, and my heart starts beating faster. There’s something terrible in the way he stares, and I grit my teeth to gnaw down any outburst.

            When folding the hot towels from the dryer, Jimmy’s erratic ministrations cease to exist. He fixes everything with carefulness, doesn’t slip up, stays scarily calm, his red hands trembling but not fucking it up. And he hums not once.

            However tolerable it is, he’s not attempting to hide any grievances he may be harboring, and I don’t know what they’re for. But I’m the one who must live with him. His teeth have been dappled red before—and he managed that while somehow exiting his cell. I’m in open space.

            By meal time, I approach him and say, “Jim, what’s up?”

            He turns his eyes up at me, pink and swollen, “You didn’t ask how I slept last night.”

            I sip from my glass of water, and go, “How did you sleep last night?”

            For all his litheness, for all his meth-riddled physique implies, the kid is strong, and when he launches himself at me my cup clatters to the ground, my head landing in its slickness when it cracks back against the floor. Red flashes in my vision and I cough up a glob of yellow sticky phlegm when the ball joint of his knee nails me in my softening stomach. The long spit comes back down and hits me over the eye (or it would, had I not been donning glasses), and I wheeze violently, my sickness abolishing any energy to fight back. Beating his pointed knuckles with surprisingly little force against my jaw, I bring up one hand and restrain his wrist before two prison guards, both overweight doppelgangers, hoist him off of me and throw him against the wall. He shrieks and kicks, my body throbbing with achiness, but the initial pain that bloomed hard and fast through me is only a shallow echo. Sitting up, popping my jaw and holding my chin in my hand, I blink rapidly. It’s odd to be the victim of an outburst, attracting a crowd, the ghost of movements mapping your body—sense memory, not vision, will remind me for the rest of my days, I guess. I was blinking past my spit.

            Removing my glasses, I wipe it on the front of my cotton shirt, thinking, _there goes laundry day._

            One of the guards, smashing Jimmy Jazz’s face against the wall, says, “You stupid, boy?!”

            But I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he’s doing whatever the fuck he wants with no self-preservation as far as societal punishments are concerned. He doesn’t give a fuck about what happens to him. It’s true survivalism—or rather selfishness, whatever you want to call it. You can see it in his slouch and his rotted teeth, definitely nothing new, that he doesn’t give a single fuck what anyone thinks of him. He’s liberated fully. And maybe he doesn’t know what the word “accommodation” or even “stamina” means. But he’s reverted back to his animalistic and uninhibited manner nature to us and feral children alone. So he’s not stupid. He’s Marquis de Sade’s perfect disciple, as far as I’m concerned.

            But then again, it could also be the pills dotting my mind.

            I help myself up. The guards aren’t cruel enough to make me out to be that much of a pussy in front of other inmates. Ironically, I do care what they think. Or rather, my asshole cares. Call me stupid. I spit a wad of phlegm out again, wipe my mouth with my forearm and grin. “Shit,” I laugh, and then say again, “Shit.”

            Jimmy Jazz, of course, is moved to isolation. There he can be awake for all I care, chirping his incest noises and thrumming alive.

            For two days I am at peace in my silence, and I dream more dreams, but Felix is beginning to fade from my mind. There is still the starburst of anger that eats at my chest at the prospect of him being taken from me, my rightful possession cruelly snatched from me.

            And yet, the memories are going hazy, pictures clear in my mind but the aromas, the words in them starting to shed. I take more pills those two days, and all I can remember are feet on a dash, armpit-sweat-stained shirts, flower picking outside the home, hair dye smoothed on with plastic gloves, pink skies and the tedious abduction, the names of the roads, the processes. No feeling.

            There is a news article published about “Runaway Felix” and it’s all this bullshit about how his GPA is wonderful, how he’s got a scholarship to an Ivy League school, how he’s such a great survivor and how he’s melding back into society comfortably. They’ve since moved from the Sorel into a two-room home.

            Attached is a picture of Felix, unrecognizable with short, cropped hair, glasses, growing into a young adult, finally.

            I keep the clipping beneath my pillow, think of it carefully in the sad night.

            It crinkles when I turn over.

            But the two days end, and I am assigned a newly-incarcerated prisoner.

*

            On a bleak February morning, the month abolishing the sun, the vertex of his hairline appears over the pages of my book. I don’t bother to look up, licking my thumb and turning the page. To my left, the cot creaks, and I cannot hear his breathing, but already his stillness is preferable to Jimmy’s. My eyes scroll lines, this book from a fangirl, some crime noir that I’m not that into, but I’m not complaining. The Thomas Mann Diaries have not been returned to the library. I wait for it with less anticipation than before. There is very little lust in me. My fever has dissipated and with it I thought my cock might rise, my supposed improvements only temporary, but they’re gone, gone, gone.

            To live without orgasms, I’ve realized, is suicide-inducing. But I’ve been castrated as soon as Esme left. A guy commits suicide in this very prison about once every week, but no one sees it, it just passes by word of mouth. No one’s surprised, and no one mourns.

            People die every day.

            “Hello,” says my roommate, and I lift my eyes from the book, tired of men, tired tired tired of men, of living with men, of living with men like me and their needs and their attention sucking abilities, and I look at him.

            In the shivering midst of this indigent penitentiary, there he sat, his hair flaxen and pale, the gold of a holiday bell.  Beside his full lips petal pink, the bowed angel top and his teeth (baby teeth!) settled on the protuberance of his bottom lip, was a dimple, a deep line. His arms were slender, his legs deep concavities, his shoulders hunched over a chest so small it might break, his cotton shirt hanging over his curved spine, suspended by his collarbones, white and soft. Skin lilac, long, black eyelashes framing big eyes, his eyelids veiny and pink thin flesh wet with something like Vaseline. His small hands were clasped as his forearms dotted with sleek little blonde hairs rested upon his knees, 90 degree angles of sharp calves and tiny thighs to rival Joey Ramone’s.

            “Hello,” I say back, extending a hand to him.

            When he takes it, the red blob of a blister bursts on his otherwise gentle palm, pus creaming over my wrist. He hisses and stands up on legs so thin and wobbly I doubt for a moment he can hold himself up, as unsteady as a newborn fawn’s. “I’m sorry,” he says, bringing the front of his shirt to wipe my hand, so big it dwarfs his.

            “No, no, that’s okay,” and I don’t cough, but my voice is weak as the hammering of my chest culminates, my cheeks going hot, fingertips thrumming at the shirt, just like mine. He grins, baby teeth sticking out jaggedly from pale gums, and brings his hand up to his plush lips to mouth the flap of skin, nursing it as a baby might his bottle.

            _Oh, yeah_ , I think, seminal fluid seeping down my thigh, cock fluttering like a disturbed butterfly, _I’m cured, alright_.

* * *

 

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it ends! I've had such a good time writing this, I am very proud of myself for finishing it in about six months, but then, this is only the first draft. I'm so thankful for all the reviews, all the followers, all the kudos, every single kind word I've gotten. You have no idea how much it's helped me on the way. All insights, all final thoughts, all critiques are greatly appreciated. You've all been too kind. I'm so happy for everyone who has said they'll support me as an author, because that is my dream, and it's so reassuring to hear that as a dumb, inspired eighteen-year-old. I hope you've all enjoyed Cat Piss. I sure did. If not, tell me. I strive to improve. But I'll never stop writing.
> 
> As I go through a second draft of this personally, I will be posting interspersed fics here, hopefully, and I hope you will enjoy that as well.
> 
> Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you. You're all 20th century foxes. You've got my cold cold heart. You're peaches and cream. You're my friends.
> 
> Love you all.


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